Please make dailies more player/group friendly

[Starglitter]

Hi:

 

Upon making 55 it became time to gear up! And thus the need to do dailies for both credits and commendations is present.

 

While I have no issue in the performance of the dailies, in a daily manner, I would appreciate a bit of designer/software developer initiative to help with civility in the game, so the player/customer could get more enjoyment out of the "game"

 

The problem I am asking for relief has to do with the nature of some of the dailies, let me illustrate...

 

Take Section X, actually amuzing and well narrated stories. But the very frist one you need 10 bio samples, this one is not as bad as those that follows, there are about 30 things you can fight to get the 10 samples, so if three player/groups come at different time, there is not too much doing each other wrong by taking the required resource to complete the mission. But once you finish, now you have to go destroy the robot in the base, it all begins with defeat 26 mobs, there are about 32 mobs total outside, and about 26 more inside. There are not sufficient mobs, to handle more than 2 players, and thus what is a fun and fast paced game becomes a wait for the spawn situation and that is frankly boring. Since I doubt many of us find it fun to wait for respawns, we find each other competing to beat the next player to a mob and thus rudeness among the players begins, section X is the worst at this, for after you knock of the robot, guess what, the next one you have to get a bunch of mods and 4 tubes, another zone of player trying to beat player to the too resource poor zone, and you think you are done with this? ah no, now to free the hostages and get a bunch of mobs in an area that there is onlly enough for only one player to get through, but not even 2 coulld with out going into boredom mode (wait for spawn), and spawn times are not very quick either.

 

Now go to Black Hole, this one has a mix of boredom mode and full fun, not a bad zone as a whole, the second mission where you defeat a bunch of mobs, can get competitive and mean if more than 2 players are at it, the get the 6 boxex, does get ugly if more than 1, and the last phase a single spawn point to draw last mob, oh well... But once you get past that, the other two missions are instanced and you or your team and you can ow relax and enjoy the missions.

 

Which brings me back to my suggestion...

 

Can you re-specify the number of mobs needed to a phase to allow for more players at a time, so there is not that much naturally imposed player on player frinction? Grouping tends to be impractical, if I get to a zone and a player is already there and more than halfway done with the requirement and I am zip, then as I began to get mobs and thus slowing down the original player, I get to about halfway and another player at zi towards it arrives, this is not a "get a group" type answer kind of a deal. But perhaps instead of requiring say 26 mobs per player/group, the system knows how many are at teh zone and could scale accordingly, so if there are say 4 players in the area of a specific daily, say the one about four tubes, you then are ow required to only get 1 tube and instead of 18 mobs you only need 18/4 round down, you only need 4 mobs to complete mission/step requirements; by doing so the natural situation were player attitudes come into confrontation can be avoided by having the software more aware that this is a reality, and can be prevented through thoughtful design.

 

Another way to entirely avoid the player friction with each otehr over too few resources to accomplish the mission, is to make all dailies instanced. Perhaps when you go to the mission box, you can choose between open world or instanced, after all having a choice is always good. something similar is done at flashpoints were a player can choose beween normal and hard, so a precedence for choice is available.

 

Sue

[Starglitter]

oh, I forgot there is a third option for the objective click types such as the boxes in Blackhole...

 

Make the click-able items persistent, that is if you click it, they are now used-up for you, but remain available for other players so they are not forced to wait for re-spawn.

 

LOTRO does this for example, since their last expansion was not too large and knew that a great density of players would descend to the area, and thus introduced the concept of mission objective persistence, to avoid players cannibalizing each other. Amuzingly they also implented kill "credit" share, so if you help another kill a mob, you get credit as well towards your count, that also may solve the issue of player friction as well, and encourage much more adhoc cooperation without the need to formally group. When it got to loot, LOTRO actually allowed all partiipants to get full independent loot rolls, so the assisted players would not lose potential loot for being helped, but everyone who did participate can independly get a full drop. This did much to really help people attitudes towards helping each other and ended the loot ninja issue as well.

 

 

Sue

[GatorAndy]

Are you asking for MORE mobs in Section X?

 

I haven't any trouble doing any of these missions in a LOOOOOONG time.

 

Blackhole is almost always dead when I go there. I remember when it first came out, it was a fight for the boxes, but the times I do it now, I hardly see very many others there. Grouping does help to get the boxes done quicker, you just have to be near a group member when they pop a box.

 

Section X is slightly more busy, but even that has greatly reduced in population since it first came out.

 

I feel like these areas are quite well balanced. Blackhole is doable in about 30 minutes, plus another 15 for the heroic; probably faster even. Section X just suffers from being such a large area, travel time is the biggest time waster there.

 

(edited for spacing)

Edited August 15, 2013 by GatorAndy

[Starglitter]

Mmm...

 

I do not recall proposing adding more mobs on my three alternative ways to reduce inter-player friction. Yet I acknowledge your proposal of adding more mobs does have merit. Of course since maps are so small, adding more mobs could be a situation were the medicine is worse than the disease :<)

 

Frankly I would like the persistent mission objectives, so if I beat somebody to it, it will be spent for me, but remain quite clickable for the other player. Furthermore an auto collaboration schema for mobs is also appealing, for it would engender cooperation, so if you are fighting a mob and I help you, I get credit towards my mission count. That in fact greatly reduce the player friction levels, with the exceptions of those who wants to deal with mobs alone, maybe they do it for selfish reasons, rp, etc, but then its a shared world :<)

 

If all dailies were instanced, then no friction at all would occur.

 

Sue