Mission Rewards Rebalancing

Hello Mindark,

the politically formulated 2 "goals" of the complete guidelines sound really nice and positive aimed at the player audience but now im curious what exactly is included in your "guidelines".

To give people the chance to decide for themself if the new changes are good or not please make the complete guidelines open as they are.

I estimate the potential of several planet partners inside the entropia universe as chance for the system as a whole to prosper from a open, colorful and creative competition of the planet partners to each others.

What makes me really feel that a competition is going on instead a bandwith of same food which only looks different?

Beware that people cannot eat as much of the same as they want to vomit.

I hope that you dont choose to regulate this competition down instead of keep moving yourself.

Petition for open the guidelines!

Fight steamcloud and smokegrenade politics!

When you use chipping optimizer to see how many skill you might need to get to a certain profession isnt it agility that you put in as a base calculator? therefore ithink u need these attributes.

Terminator said:

Wow, I missed this MA post you quoted.

Hmmm, so if they say Attributes are just "something to show off", it's better to slow down the missions, wait for August and have skills instead.

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If we are givenmissions and start them with good faith we should be given a decent amount of time to complete all missions and i can assure you we have not had that.

Buds said:

Every game needs some balancing eventually be it minor or major. So I personally don't see why EU shouldn't be any different and yes it will affect every player in some way. Plenty of other online games have been balanced several times over the years in one way or another. There's always the minority that winge and complain about it some get over it and most just enjoy what is offered and ADAPT.

Even though I have completed Iron Missions for some mobs that this balancing will affect I look forward to the changes to other missions I will complete in the future.

MA you have my support...

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well if the problem is to reach the uber 's skill that mainly gained them when we had a different skills rate gain (without considering the cheating)then the easy way to fix it and just to nerf the old players.
and voila,

DC

Liberty EXR-5 said:

If we are givenmissions and start them with good faith we should be given a decent amount of time to complete all missions and i can assure you we have not had that.

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Read!

Do not forget that MA will not only rebalancing the missions.....

Befor we had "dynamic" + "balanced" = loot
Nowdays we will get "dynamic" + "balanced" + "fair" = loot

So i think we will not get back this " 90% " back it will be less.

Well yes cos when u have finally finished playing and you think great my skills are worth idk $19000 they will actually be worth about an average of 40% of true value therefore 90% really wont matter.

Dr.D.C. said:

1)maybe is true the missions are not balanced, then the question is: what the MA coders, balance team, CEO or whatever were doing during making them?

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Doing their jobs presumably.

Missions are created by planet partners. Following some planet partners creating missions with, it seems, crazy awards it looks like MA have stepped in and created a guideline of what awards can be offered based on the effort required to complete the mission.

Yes, ideally that guideline should have been present originally, but the past doesn't have the advantage of hindsight.

I suspect tho that balancing is really taking a dim view of what are apparently "easy missions" in relation to rewards. If u run up to 200 mobs and get pec loots or nova frags from them and on your 201st mob you get an uber great. If to do 10k spiders and get reward then to counter balance that you may do 100 mobs elsewhere and get + agility. I think thats fair. Planet partners would have introduced some tempting rewards possibly to attract visitors. Fine! fair enough to me. There will be many other missions that take one helluva long time to do often with great difficulty and expense. Extra balancing I dont think is needed;- extra time to do the missions is needed.

Huskie said:

Like Akbar, I just can't understand how they have to rebalance their own missions after several years have passed which were designed by themselves and made before any others and thus should have set the standard to begin with.

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in the case of Calypso they didn't make all the missions, the team responsible for many are no longer with MA.

Charlie|Calypso said:

As I said earlier I will try to get such a list done as soon as possible, but the actual re-balancing will have to be done first, perhaps a couple of examples could be provided along the way though.

Anyway I have to sleep now so any further answers from me will have to wait until tomorrow.

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I would really like to see such list or at least examples of it!

But maybe you could answer one question:

Will final stage skill reward stay the same as they are or they will be changed, eg. spreaded out through earlier stages?

I'm afraid that (as usually) the middle man will feel most pain - those who are in middle of mission.
I have 7 missions at 5k level, 3 or 4 on 10k and 2 bronze.

Let's take Scipulor Iron as example.
Now you get:
100 - Psyche
500 - Intelligence
1k - Agility
5k - Strenght
10k - Stamina + (100 ped tt Evade or 170 Athletics or 100 First Aid)

So will final skill rewards stay same or can change to something like:
100 - (10 ped tt Evade or 10 Athletics or 10 First Aid)
500 - (15 ped tt Evade or 15 Athletics or 15 First Aid)
1k - (20 ped tt Evade or 25 Athletics or 20 First Aid)
5k - (25 ped tt Evade or 40 Athletics or 25 First Aid)
10k - Stamina + (60 ped tt Evade or 110 Athletics or 60 First Aid)

So overall It would be more skills instead attributes for whole chain (130 Evade or 200 Athletics or 130 First Aid), BUT for somebody who will be at 10k stage when the change comes it will be big loss!

Please answer this simple question.



Also, if I understand correctly, primary reason to remove attributes is that for new players they affect in a bad way their future progress.
There is simple solution for that - make attribs from mission as counters, so base attribute stays same and have same rate of increasing but there is counter eg. agility is 70 (base) +3 (from missions). This would also be handy to add some artifacts that change attributes.

Jimmy B said:

Doing their jobs presumably.

Missions are created by planet partners. Following some planet partners creating missions with, it seems, crazy awards it looks like MA have stepped in and created a guideline of what awards can be offered based on the effort required to complete the mission.

Yes, ideally that guideline should have been present originally, but the past doesn't have the advantage of hindsight.

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systems like payback work like that. you get points in a supermarket for every purchase and some good you buy seem to get you more points. goods which have higher price than elswhere.

people think that they get some nice item as reward for beeing a brave loyal spending customer but all who calculate closely what they do see that in the end they spend way more money to achieve the "reward" than what they would have spend if they bought all goods and the reward elsewhere.

thats why i would anyways never hardcore-grind the missions


btw why is the date of change set to august? someone concerned about this years black hole during summer?

Bjorn|MindArk said:

There will be no retroactive refunds or reimbursements for missions that have already been completed.

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A big clusterfuck to have just completed 5k trox a few days ago

Teiwaz Storm said:

I would really like to see such list or at least examples of it!

But maybe you could answer one question:

Will final stage skill reward stay the same as they are or they will be changed, eg. spreaded out through earlier stages?

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Each stage of all missions on all planets will be subject to the new reward formulas.

Note that the reward for each stage is calculated independently of other stages. So for example with Calypso's Iron Challenge mission format, the reward for the last stage is calculated based on 10,000 kills of the mission creature, not based on 16,600 kills for the entire mission chain--since the rewards for earlier stages have already been given.

Parters have been encouraged to keep intact as many existing rewards as possible while adhering to the new guidelines. Which means that as many creatures as possible will still reward stamina+skills for the final stage of Calypso Iron Challenge missions.

uni_corn said:

btw why is the date of change set to august? someone concerned about this years black hole during summer?

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MindArk has a predetermined schedule of planet partner releases. There are no partner releases scheduled during June and July due to summer holiday for many of MindArk and planet partner employees, leaving the following possible dates to implement the rebalanced mission rewards--

• May 1
• May 29
• August 21

Since we wanted to give participants some notice and time to complete missions in progress, the August 21 planet partner release was the best choice.

Bjorn|MindArk said:

Since we wanted to give participants some notice and time to complete missions in progress, the August 21 planet partner release was the best choice.

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Good, but for those who are doing multiple mission concurrently, it is not near enough time.

And for those of us who delayed doing missions so as to make the most of the attribute rewads it is absurdly inadequate, and means that much intensive preparation (ie skilling up attributes a fast as possible) is utterly wasted.

I think that MA has failed to realise how much of the above was going on ...or is it simply failed to care?

IT would be possible to save the situation I think, by offereing a the players a choice between the old rewards and the new for a legthy transitional period (at least one year)...or by delaying the change for an awful lot longer, of course.

No answer on that?

Jimmy B said:

Doing their jobs presumably.

Missions are created by planet partners. Following some planet partners creating missions with, it seems, crazy awards it looks like MA have stepped in and created a guideline of what awards can be offered based on the effort required to complete the mission.

Yes, ideally that guideline should have been present originally, but the past doesn't have the advantage of hindsight.

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You would of thought MA would have some way of cheacking what is going out from other planets to make sure things are balanced. Then if you look at how many probelms we have had with the last few platforms vu there test area is crap.

Now i have read a few posts concerning the Catscapades missions saying it was giving out crazy rewards, but on Calyspo you can get 1 stamina point for just running around a swamp.

Ceral said:

Attributes are a topic for conversation, the focus of many threads, they're the best gauge for "I've played a lot". I wouldn't underestimate how important attributes are in our universe.

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Attributes in the game need rebalancing on a foundational level, especially if new players are coming into the game. It scares experienced gamers when making decisions about money to see that traditional things such as attributes aren't working right (stamina?) - they're the backbone achievement of any leveling game in the Universe, a personal thing people take pride in and focus on indefinitely to make their character powerful and "kickass"

Two things need to be addressed. Most importantly, since attributes aren't subject to the in/out chipping system, they must be obtained thru direct, hard work, each one should have a clearly defined gameplay tweak that differentiates its value from other attributes and skill gains by giving a unique change in the experience as a reward, making them desirable to obtain.

Ceral said:

Or if no one thinks attributes are that big of a deal anymore, perhaps it's time to discuss lifting the insane softcap on them?

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Secondly, the ability to obtain these attributes needs to be based on the nature, or speed, of the reward system laid out for the point values in these categories. This can be done in conjuction with the arbitrary and current reward system being thinned out to, say, 200 points "max"? like the rest of the Eu professional levels or make it 300 like the movie. This will slightly nerf everyone, the ubers more than the mid-levels (am I going to be perma-KOS now?), but can be immediately redeemed by having a clearly defined gameplay tweak that empowers each attribute, independently and on the point value level to make up for the difference in previously supposed gain.

Overall the attributes need more personality. If planet partners in the future can't supply attribute missions because players have too many available already, there are always skill and item rewards to be implemented with numerous tweaks that keep lore and gameplay alive, instead of making attribute implants for delaying/trading them or dishing out attribute points that aren't whole numbers (as suggested) to a cram packed cluster%%(* system being pushed in on all sides by expansion. Consider enlarging and enriching the attribute system, not complicating it. I don't disagree with complication, it's the part of Eu that I love, as the Universe is comprised of broad topics such as math, economics, timing, and environment interwoven into a layered matrix... I just think that something as foundational as attributes should be kept simple, fair, and rewarding for everyone, new and old, and that this is an area where stepping back and getting space would solve pertinent issues as opposed to continuing down a track on this train of thought. The news of this has already put a lot of people on edge, so there's no taking it back now, and the best option is to create out of nothing to give everyone something pleasantly surprising (or, at the least, rightfully expected). I've read all of the posts, and those scorning the current events at MindArk won't forgive this endeavor unless it has a positive, demonstrable outcome.

Shadowsong said:

Play more, grind less. Live as an Entropian.

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Great post!

EDIT:

burnsey said:

Attributes really don't do anything special. I could have all my agility removed and it would just lower some of my professional levels by 1% and decrease my hit points by 1 or 2.

The only attributes that give you a nominal positive effect are strength now that it increases your inventory carry weight.

Attributes are pretty meaningless except for showing off. What does 100 in attribute give you except bragging rights?

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If this is true, and their net mathematical contribution is extremely low, this further proves the blurring of the line between attributes and skills. The gain in attributes to a professional standing should be removed entirely pending Mindark's decision as to what attributes are really for. Once they have a set purpose in gameplay, and the relationship between attributes and skills are clearly established (HP is a great attribute - it's only affected by skill gain and has a function completely separate of anything else), then decisions regarding rewards on missions and contribution of attributes to professional standing become more clear.

Begin with the foundational problem in the attribute system; this is the rotten apple in the barrel.

valentin said:

Do not forget that MA will not only rebalancing the missions.....

Befor we had "dynamic" + "balanced" = loot
Nowdays we will get "dynamic" + "balanced" + "fair" = loot

So i think we will not get back this " 90% " back it will be less.

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Think they already did that. I have been slowly working on the Argo mission using Honor sword and wearing Gnome armor no plates (35 Evader). The loot changed shortly after this re-balance to missions was announced. I had a short update to the game also right before I noticed the change.

The hunting runs are short since I am only using one sword that I am also tiering and using skill or accuracy enhancers on. I only kill about 58 to 60 each run. 4 of 7 runs have been almost exactly 41 peds tt value, 54, 57 and 38 on the others. I have never had that perfect of a loot average range before while doing the mission and I am at around 6500/10k atm.

Hunts before using same set up has varied from 20 peds to 90 peds and the cost to repair the sword is about 78 ped. I know it is not many hunts yet but they seem to have already re-balanced the mission mob loot for Argo to make sure players get a more average but low loot return.

I doubt I will see another global on them now. If I do please make it a large HOF MA so I can finish my Atrox Iron mission that I had just started the 10k before this announcement.

bigdaddy trim said:

You would of thought MA would have some way of cheacking what is going out from other planets to make sure things are balanced. Then if you look at how many probelms we have had with the last few platforms vu there test area is crap.

Now i have read a few posts concerning the Catscapades missions saying it was giving out crazy rewards, but on Calyspo you can get 1 stamina point for just running around a swamp.

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I don't know if you remember but that was the first stamina ever given when the mission system just came out and was being tested.

Bjorn|MindArk said:

Since we wanted to give participants some notice and time to complete missions in progress, the August 21 planet partner release was the best choice.

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Couldn't make it August 21 2013 at all?

Quite happy getting Nova for 5000 anything, its what I've had in the past for several Iron challenges but will only have time left to complete 2 or 3 more Iron let alone what is available on other planets.

Jimmy B said:

Doing their jobs presumably.

Missions are created by planet partners. Following some planet partners creating missions with, it seems, crazy awards it looks like MA have stepped in and created a guideline of what awards can be offered based on the effort required to complete the mission.

Yes, ideally that guideline should have been present originally, but the past doesn't have the advantage of hindsight.

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if they were doing their job no adjustment would be necessary. "They" means planet partners and MA that in the calypso case is the same entity (do you know it right?).
But i guess me and you never will agree about some.
Glad about.
dc

Mega said:

Couldn't make it August 21 2013 at all?

Quite happy getting Nova for 5000 anything, its what I've had in the past for several Iron challenges but will only have time left to complete 2 or 3 more Iron let alone what is available on other planets.

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Grab what you can before the nerf hits us by doing only the lower stages of the Iron Missions and their equivalents on other planets.

Dear MA just make it possible to skill up naturaly on higher levels and we dont need any adjustments to iron missions - in that case we dont need missions at all.
Your decision to sell us attributes trought missions for a lot higher price after 21. august do not solve flaws in skill system.

Audrey Cheerful said:

Grab what you can before the nerf hits us by doing only the lower stages of the Iron Missions and their equivalents on other planets.

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Or, sit on your deposits, don't do anything, wait and see if they really do nerf it and decide from there.

I for on am glad for the annoucements of late. I decided to take a few months off back in jan, for a break...now I think it'll be a longer break without some details forthcoming. Thank god, was just thinking of a deposit a few days ago ...thx MA for the heads up

Seriously, it's not like the first nerf, and it won't be the last either. Why panic? It's not like the mission rewards were super exciting anyway....if you were a pre-gold player you'll always have the upper hand...

I'm amazed that people were surprised at the admission attributes did shit??

Skills are almost as worthless...but they look pretty when someone scan's you...

Steve_saber said:

wait and see if they really do nerf it

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They're most certainly will nerf many missions that give attributes. Sure, they will substitute something else for it but that something can be obtained through other means. Attributes not so much, worthless or not.

Audrey Cheerful said:

They're most certainly will nerf many missions that give attributes. Sure, they will substitute something else for it but that something can be obtained through other means. Attributes not so much, worthless or not.

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oh, well in that case i'll go deposit a few k ped for a couple days entertainment so my useless attributes will look GOOD



or not.

Bjorn|MindArk said:

Each stage of all missions on all planets will be subject to the new reward formulas.

Note that the reward for each stage is calculated independently of other stages. So for example with Calypso's Iron Challenge mission format, the reward for the last stage is calculated based on 10,000 kills of the mission creature, not based on 16,600 kills for the entire mission chain--since the rewards for earlier stages have already been given.

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Based on what you have said above a current mission for example gives 160 ped skill at the end of the 10k iron will under the new formula give 100 ped skill, because the other 60 ped skill is given out during the 5k, 1k, 500 & 100 iron stages.

So over all we lose the attributes from the early stages as the skill reward is spread out over the other stages to cover, over all the skill reward stays the same. This still sounds like a nerf to me, or your not explaining yourself very well.

jaywalker said:

Good, but for those who are doing multiple mission concurrently, it is not near enough time.

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I have like 8 open missions ..I was doing at my leisure..But I do prefer the skills reward over attributes (except for stamina I would like mostly) I think the missions that were set in place for players and especially new players is a great incentive for them to try to obtain and would be a mistake to remove any already in place..in my opinion.
I think the developing team should not do a "redo" a old part of game play,and just implement something "new" for attributes and missions.Personally I don't like/use the mission token system so can't really say how thats working out,but please reconsider the rest.

OK NOW I CAN HIT THIS:

So browsing this thread I can see some nasty stuff addressed to the new players:

- if you went ahead and did the missions you're stupid and you should have listen to the older players;

- or if you did the missions, somehow you'll have an advantage over some mid-level players who for years were skilling "naturally", only to do the missions to get to the coveted 100, so now the gap is no big enough. I did not know that doing missions is not skilling "naturally", but staying a repair zombie on a MS or scanning vehicles days on end is.

- or if depo a lot (I did not, a lot) and chip-in skills (I did not) you're just a rich kid in their moms basement (I am not, sadly - I'm not a welfare recipient either, bummer)

- if you're getting a global on daiki/shinki (just several per month maybe per mob, and mostly to older players - never happened to me on 100+500+1k+5k missions, got 30-40-50% loot usually) you're a blood-ped-sucker of another semi-uber HOF.

Really, really disturbing opinions. So the new players are just cannon fodder, destined to stay in line in OJ and depo until some mid-level players will reach their uber status? Frankly those expressing such opinions should have a goal in RL life too - better one than to strive to reach the status of those they don't like them right now of being ubers. Kudos to those realizing the contrary in regard to new players.

That's being said, I knew MA will nerf the rewards since I started playing in June last year. Next Island missions, and RT missions, giving easy skills to the vast majority of players, were gone for me, and after the new token missions I got the message loud and clear.

For those who have no ideea about new players challenges today.. a normal player (under 50usd/month depo, not an alternative ava, not one who receives free items from mentors, not a scammer or pirate etc) starting up have, for the first year, the limited choice to hunt up to argo/allo youngs (barely).

So except the 100 missions on Argo, Cornu, Foul, Merp, Shinkiba and maybe Ripper and Molisk, is game over to them attribute-reward wise. A couple more on other planets, but mostly were nerfed already (on RT which was pointed out is not as you remember - on most easy missions you'll get a lot of repetitive junk as reward, wonder if those will get skill reward now). 500 missions are mostly novas and as demanding for them as is 5k for you, with MUCH worse loot I assure you. At the 1000 mission, 90% of the new players already left the game, living proof my FL list from my "old" days. There are no nice pieces of armors for them in loot, no guns except emik or chikara or so - all good equipment has to be aquired at MU from other players. Easier requirements on mining, but also peds drain faster when things go south.

This being said, nerfing the mission rewards, even for the 100 missions (what MA, you want to give 0.1 PED rifle skill like 600 point traeskeron give? 1 FREAKING CENT? ) is a big mistake. Leave it as it is, remove the nova rewards and give another attribute gain (after all, you said is not a big deal anyway - give Agility, is nerfed already) and INCREASE the reward for all 10k missions (give them that stamina + some skill). And make a damn page on entropia universe with mob stats and mission rewards, EU should not be a bazaar where you buy something and see what you really bought back home!

I will never have the patience or the funds to grind 10k mobs, so those players deserve better. Then nerf stamina for all, take that health bar from ubers ) (/jk)

Proudly reached 50 agility yesterday - it was not a goal, it just happened doing yet another mission.

Violet said:

Based on what you have said above a current mission for example gives 160 ped skill at the end of the 10k iron will under the new formula give 100 ped skill, because the other 60 ped skill is given out during the 5k, 1k, 500 & 100 iron stages.

So over all we lose the attributes from the early stages as the skill reward is spread out over the other stages to cover, over all the skill reward stays the same. This still sounds like a nerf to me, or your not explaining yourself very well.

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Actually, he said the reverse - the reward for stage X will be independent of previous stages. Which appears to be the same as now, except that a lot of 5K stages give us crap.

But on a more fundamental level, I think it is not a good idea to have a hard enforcement that every stage must pay for its own effort, with no rollup possible. I'm not sure what they will do with the Mad Prophet missions, where you do three stages and then get a reward (provided they in the meanwhile have bothered to find out there is such a mission chain), and what Bjorn is saying sounds like such will not be possible in the future. A pity.