Higher rank missions need to be harder, not just higher paying.

[Cmdr Kurnek]

Simple really, a lot of missions of higher rank aren't any more difficult they just pay more for no apparent reason.

Make them harder, add NPCs that hunt you (and who are actually any degree of successful in interdiction) to high rank data delivery missions, make high rank pirate massacre missions spawn wings or larger more dangerous ships that start hunting you partway through the mission instead of just adding more sidewinders to grind through...

 

[Marc_Hicks]

Simple really, a lot of missions of higher rank aren't any more difficult they just pay more for no apparent reason.

Make them harder, add NPCs that hunt you (and who are actually any degree of successful in interdiction) to high rank data delivery missions, make high rank pirate massacre missions spawn wings or larger more dangerous ships that start hunting you partway through the mission instead of just adding more sidewinders to grind through...

I agree. Tougher NPC opponents, more likelihood of mission wrinkle(s), more non-combat challenge in achieving your goal, having missions automatically require multiple steps to complete (I don't mean follow ons).

A few examples-a very high paid black box salvage mission could have the added difficulty of (a) legal, non-hostile "claim jumpers" trying to get the black box before you, (b) the black box might be spawned within a dense debris field, or within an asteroid field/ring, within the exclusion zone of a military CQC asset, or just inside the orbital cruise limit of a planetary surface....to name a few.

A data or cargo delivery might be made more difficult by a requirement to *not* get scanned even once, or the need to meet with a 3rd party to either recieve the haulage, receive instructions on delivery location or hand off the haulage.....or it could be a combo of "don't get scanned" & "3rd party contact".

Planetary scans should be in ever larger Proc. Gen. Facilities, requiring significant searching to find the data point, or you should have to scan multiple data points to unlock the one you need, or the facility should be hostile towards your scan attempts.....or a combo of all of the above.

Surface salvage missions could also be made tougher by the presence of more and/or tougher skimmers, the pressnce of 1 or 2 Goliaths....or even a small ship...or the salvage could be in a hard to reach location and/or very well hidden.

The hostile ships might be sent against you warning needs to be much more of a sure thing too.

 

[Marc_Hicks]

Simple really, a lot of missions of higher rank aren't any more difficult they just pay more for no apparent reason.

Make them harder, add NPCs that hunt you (and who are actually any degree of successful in interdiction) to high rank data delivery missions, make high rank pirate massacre missions spawn wings or larger more dangerous ships that start hunting you partway through the mission instead of just adding more sidewinders to grind through...

I recall a mission wrinkle for a high priced salvage mission-during beta-where I had 2 hostiles hunting me. I laughed it off until I found out they were flying PYTHONS. Even my FdL struggled to fend them off. That should be the exception, not the rule, for high ranked mission opponents IMHO.

 

[Marc_Hicks]

Did 3 missions recently, 2 low paid & 1 high paid. The 2 low paid turned out to be much more fun, as there was much more difficulty involved. I definitely know what I prefer, & it ain't the credits.

 

[Bunkerkind Anni]

actually,
with haul missions,
there is a LOWER chance to be interdicted with a full load of mission cargo from 20 missions,

then with 1 ton of a random high-price commodity from the open market.

 

[Cmdr Kurnek]

Did 3 missions recently, 2 low paid & 1 high paid. The 2 low paid turned out to be much more fun, as there was much more difficulty involved. I definitely know what I prefer, & it ain't the credits.

ok, be appreciative of the difficulty all you like, but I think it's dangerous to suggest to frontier that good game design doesn't matter. The more dangerous missions should be higher paying, and the less dangerous should be less well paid. This really shouldn't be hard...

actually,
with haul missions,
there is a LOWER chance to be interdicted with a full load of mission cargo from 20 missions,

then with 1 ton of a random high-price commodity from the open market.

ok that is just pathetic.

 

[Padaxes]

I agree 100% with the OP.

It has been a long time since I had any trouble with a bounty mission and I have very fond memories in the early days of trying to solo Pirate Lord Condas in my Viper mkIII. Now that was FUN! I'd lose my cockpit, race back to base repair, go out and try again, after a few goes I'd finally do it , and get (for me at the time) a huge payout. Challenging, fun, exciting and rewarding.

Once the challenge is removed the game become purely about time, I see an assassination mission, for half a million credits, I know I can do it without losing my shields, it will take me x amount of time. It's just a chore.

Now if the missions continued to scale up and there were assassination missions for say 5 million and they were challenging, I'd be all over that. The sort of combat we see with Thargoids is certainly more interesting and shows that it's possible (although there are issues with this, the goid manoeuvrability, the limited player ammo is all a bit contrived). I remember in a small ship taking on the anaconda pirate lord it was all about staying out of its line of fire and took genuine skill, I want to see more of that!

 

[CMDR Cosmic Spacehead]

+1 from me.

Elite ranked missions should be incredibly difficult, but pay very well.
Not just pay well.

I've always said though, mission rewards (be it money, cargo, mats, rep, inf, etc) should be based on risk and/or time investment Vs reward.

So if a mission is quick and easy, it's low paid.
If a mission is long, but easy, well paid.
Quick, but difficult, well paid.
Long and difficult, very well paid.

Etc.

CMDR Cosmic Spacehead

 

[Marc_Hicks]

ok, be appreciative of the difficulty all you like, but I think it's dangerous to suggest to frontier that good game design doesn't matter. The more dangerous missions should be higher paying, and the less dangerous should be less well paid. This really shouldn't be hard...



ok that is just pathetic.

Sorry, that wasn't what I was trying to say. Just meant that the missions I enjoyed the most were the ones with the increased difficulty, not the one that paid the most, but I agree that this difficulty should scale with mission payouts. If I take a surface scan mission worth nearly 1m credits, then I expect lots of impeximents to be put in my path-either en-route, at the site, or on my way back to cash in.....or even all 3.

 

[Marc_Hicks]

+1 from me.

Elite ranked missions should be incredibly difficult, but pay very well.
Not just pay well.

I've always said though, mission rewards (be it money, cargo, mats, rep, inf, etc) should be based on risk and/or time investment Vs reward.

So if a mission is quick and easy, it's low paid.
If a mission is long, but easy, well paid.
Quick, but difficult, well paid.
Long and difficult, very well paid.

Etc.

CMDR Cosmic Spacehead

As I have said elsewhere. Any mission paying less than 100,000 Cr should probably be, more or less, a milk run. Worst case scenario being a wrinkle with an optional time or destination change.

The more you get above 100,000, the more the difficulty should increase, either in the distances you need to travel, the likelihood of hostile forces being sent against you, & the complexity/danger involved in obtaining the object of the mission (if applicable). As well as increasing chances of more wrinkles & follow ons cropping up.

 

[MBaldelli]

I agree. Tougher NPC opponents, more likelihood of mission wrinkle(s), more non-combat challenge in achieving your goal, having missions automatically require multiple steps to complete (I don't mean follow ons).

I am not confident that the developers know how to work this angle with the NPCs... In fact, the last time they did the tweaking on this -- it came across as an all or nothing sort of scenario where even the harmless/mostly harmless NPCs during missions were incredibly overpowered. I seem to remember that the NPCs had to be dumbed down so that they weren't destroying new players and frustrating them out of the game.

 

[Marc_Hicks]

I am not confident that the developers know how to work this angle with the NPCs... In fact, the last time they did the tweaking on this -- it came across as an all or nothing sort of scenario where even the harmless/mostly harmless NPCs during missions were incredibly overpowered. I seem to remember that the NPCs had to be dumbed down so that they weren't destroying new players and frustrating them out of the game.

I obviously hope you are wrong in that regard.....but sending 2 Fer De Lances to take out a shipment of 2t of bauxite seems like overkill to me .

Also, in the case of haulage, salvage and fetch & return missions, I'd like to see NPC's sent to rob, not kill, the player.

I am not confident that the developers know how to work this angle with the NPCs... In fact, the last time they did the tweaking on this -- it came across as an all or nothing sort of scenario where even the harmless/mostly harmless NPCs during missions were incredibly overpowered. I seem to remember that the NPCs had to be dumbed down so that they weren't destroying new players and frustrating them out of the game.

Are you sure you aren't thinking of the 2.1 super-weapon bug there?

 

[Bunkerkind Anni]

what i see going on, is that they put up a limit on the chance that you get attacked during a mission due to the fact that it became common to stack up to 20 missions at once.

i remember times when having multiple missions active, the chance to be attacked was very high, because the accumulation of dice rolls.

now... looking back... i wonder why it was changed.
not only did they make it easier to stack lots of missions,
they also had to lower the rewards per mission because it became common to board-flip to fill up those.

IMHO,
someone with 20 elite data courier missions should be interdicted at least 20 times, even if the destination is only 1 jump away.

would be just nice if their catch phrases would differ, and the NPC's ship and loadout would represent what they are up to.

 

[kingbankai]

Simple really, a lot of missions of higher rank aren't any more difficult they just pay more for no apparent reason.

Make them harder, add NPCs that hunt you (and who are actually any degree of successful in interdiction) to high rank data delivery missions, make high rank pirate massacre missions spawn wings or larger more dangerous ships that start hunting you partway through the mission instead of just adding more sidewinders to grind through...

I agree. They should be a higher combat class and much less than 40... good lord who has the time of day to hunt 40 harmless sidewinders and vipers...

 

[kingbankai]

That would be annoying and game breaking. Maybe interdiction attempt by an Elite (Cutter, Conda, Vette) and maybe site ambushed.

 

[kingbankai]

Total agreement with Spacehead

 

[MBaldelli]

I obviously hope you are wrong in that regard.....but sending 2 Fer De Lances to take out a shipment of 2t of bauxite seems like overkill to me .

Also, in the case of haulage, salvage and fetch & return missions, I'd like to see NPC's sent to rob, not kill, the player.

I wish I was. Unfortunately I have a long memory and as I go up the ranks, I'm seeing the same sort of enemies that I saw at harmless. I don't mind, but it lacks challenge.

Are you sure you aren't thinking of the 2.1 super-weapon bug there?

I admit that I remember that very clearly and that sort of thing is still in the front of my mind when I posted my response. That whole hit-scan going on with sidewinder NPCs and Rail Guns was an agony back then. That's why I ended up going into the Deep Black until the devs fixed that problem.

I fear this might come back to rear its ugly head if the devs visit this suggestion.

 

[Marc_Hicks]

I wish I was. Unfortunately I have a long memory and as I go up the ranks, I'm seeing the same sort of enemies that I saw at harmless. I don't mind, but it lacks challenge.



I admit that I remember that very clearly and that sort of thing is still in the front of my mind when I posted my response. That whole hit-scan going on with sidewinder NPCs and Rail Guns was an agony back then. That's why I ended up going into the Deep Black until the devs fixed that problem.

I fear this might come back to rear its ugly head if the devs visit this suggestion.

That was just a one off, but it did lead to a massive over-correction. If SJA were allowed to do her job to her maximum capacity, I feel confident that she could provide Mission Specific NPC's whose skill levels matched the rank of the mission and/or of the pilot doing the mission. Getting chased down by FdL's for a measley 2t of bauxite does still feel like overkill to me.

 

[Bunkerkind Anni]

the whole fact that most player laugh when a pirate greets you with "gimme that juicy cargo" when you just have accepted a haul of 100 tonnes of biowaste, should be an indicator how unbalanced the difficulty levels are.

i also find it kinda wrong that the TYPE of npc that spawns depends more on your current ship, then on the combination of your PF ranks and the mission rating.

run elite hauls with python, and you will get inderidcted by dangerous FDLs or Pythons
run elite hauls with a corvette, and you will get juicy elite condas going after you.

i think my T9 was mostly interdicted by Cobras and Diamondbacks.