Can we maybe tone down the incapacitation in Overseer?

Discussion in 'The Veterans' Lounge' started by Tatanka, Jun 23, 2020.

  1. Tatanka Joe Schmo

    On my main account (other accounts are not doing anything higher than level 3 quests yet), the number of agents incapacitated is started to reach stupid levels.

    This morning, I logged in to claim the 5 quests I had running, and when that was done, I had 14 agents incapacitated, out of a total of 160 agents! Now, some were incapacitated from yesterday or the day before, but still, almost 10% of my agents.

    I do very few 6 hour quests, and even when I do, tend to log in only every 12 hours to deal with Overseer. I imaging the number of incapacitated agents would be higher if you did quests every 6 hours.

    On the other accounts, I have very few incapacitated agents, but I'm doing mostly level 2 and 3 quests. It's just doing level 4/max level quests where it really seems to be bad.
    dreadlord likes this.
  2. yepmetoo Abazzagorath

    Make sure you check your agents list tab, and any you see with 0 hr 0 m 0 s, click on it and wait and it will clear.
    minimind likes this.
  3. Tatanka Joe Schmo

    That's not the issue. I always do that. This is an actual 14 incapacitated agents, with time left.

    It was 17 before I clicked over to agents and back.
  4. Heajol Augur

    Unrelated but since you brought up level 4 / max level quests .. what is max level out of curiosity?
  5. Tatanka Joe Schmo

    "MAX", which is basically 5, not sure why they called it "MAX" instead.
    minimind likes this.
  6. OlavSkullcrusher Augur

    I agree. I don't think I've had that many incapacitated at once, so it could be bad luck on top of everything else, but I'm still working some of my quest types up to level 4 or above, so there's that. This has been a frustration of mine as well.

    The issue here is that gaining levels should be unambiguously an improvement. Risk vs. reward is one thing, but there are multiple reasons why the dramatic increase in the chance and duration of incapacity as you go from level 1 to 5 in quests types increases the risk much more than the reward.

    Higher level quests require more agents with higher abilities in their jobs with more bonuses filled to reach the same success chance. That means that a lot of incapacitated iconic agents start really limiting what quests you can get to 90%+ success chance. At 170-ish unique agents on my 3 accounts, I still get some quests that I don't have the specific agent that can fill all of the bonuses for a top slot. Add in a bunch of incapacitated rare and elite agents and that's a bunch of quests I won't bother with. It wouldn't be so bad, but there are many cases where the combination of bonuses offered needs one specific agent to fill all 3 or 4, but then no other agent of my 170 can fill more than one of them, and sometimes, I won't have anyone that can get any of the bonuses at the job level required.

    As I said, the duration of incapacity goes up along with the chance of incapacity. And you are still never offered more than 2 recovery quests per rotation and the recovery options are for agents that are incapacitated when the rotation happens. That can mean up to a full day of an agent being unavailable before you can get the right kind of recovery quest and have it complete. Oh, and is there any benefit to being lvl 5 in recovery quests vs. lvl 1?

    Rewards with numbers (xp and currency) seem to go up with level fine, but collection fragments only improve with critical success and tradeskill items with 'common' vs. 'uncommon' vs. 'rare' vs. 'elite' quests. (bonus agents are affect by both of those, I'm pretty sure.)

    So, risk vs. reward for leveling up in overseer - not balanced because of incapacity. The burden is on the devs to show that this is more than a cash grab to get us to spend more DBC on recovering agents. Make sure that the rewards improve enough and the amount of time we spend setting our quests up doesn't increase so much as we level.
    Coagagin likes this.
  7. Darchon_Xegony Augur

    I do feel like it is very rare I complete a level 5 mission without a single agent being incapacitated.

    I’d prefer if we could make it so that Incapacitation doesn’t count as ‘questing’ for Iconic agents. That way we could have two iconic agents and if one version is incapacitated we could use the other one.
    Tatanka likes this.
  8. dreadlord Augur

    Incapacitation ramped up enormously a few weeks ago.
    Is it random? (seems to be)
    I recently had quest with 100% chance of success and still got 4/5 agents incapacitated - that seems wrong
    Similarly a recent critical success saw 2/4 incapacitated - I know that in this context 'critical success' has various outcomes, but again it seems weird/contradictory that my agents should do well, but 2/5 of the party gets incapacitated
  9. Velisaris_MS Augur

    The problem is that improving stats in Overseer is tied to the account, not the agents. You can have max levels in all Overseer skills, but that has absolutely no effect on anything, other than allow you get higher level quests. Improving stats should have been tied to each agent, not the account.

    That's the biggest failure of Overseer. It had SO much potential to add something really cool to the game, and yet they implemented it in a such a sloppy and haphazard way that it actually adds so little to the game and is little more than a gambling mini-game.

    Every nerf of Overseer they implement and every new bug that crops up that goes unresolved just reinforces my first thought that Overseer was a 100% Holly thing that NONE of the other devs wanted anything to do with. It's an achor they are forced to drag around now.
  10. Sokki Still Won't Buff You!!

    My issue is not so much the number of Agents that get Incapacitated, it's more of the Duration and Actual Agents that get it. When I'm doing quests it seems like the same few agents are always used and the rest of the agents are never used. When I lose one of the Primary agents I use on a daily basis for 2-3 days at a time, it sucks since there's no other agents that can fill the void left by it. Sure, I can still run the quests but at a huge disadvantage since the 1 and only agent that matches the traits is incapacitated for the next 3 days.

    Also, with the recovery quests still broken, there's no way to recover the agents unless you want to spend crazy amounts of DBC to remove it. I did a Recovery quest the other day just to test it out again, the reward preview even showed the "Recover Agent" line but still no dice. After a successful completion the agent that matched the rarity/type was still incapacitated.
    Yinla likes this.
  11. Axxius Augur

    I think the duration of incapacitation is so long to make you use the Recovery quests. The problem is the Recovery quests not working correctly. A lot of the time they just do nothing: even if the 'Recover Agent' option is present in the rewards, the agents stay incapacitated.

    I suspect that once the bugs with the Recovery quests are fixed, incapacitation won't be such a PITA.
  12. DillyBar Augur

    Overseer has been nerfed to the point of garbage. It just needs removed from the game.
  13. Tatanka Joe Schmo

    Not sure that I agree. With 10-15 agents incapacitated, and one or two recovery quests offered, with quest times of at least 6 hours, it's never really worth running them, even if they work.

    Although I'm the OP, this was more meant as a gentle ask to the devs. I'm approaching it as, Overseer's just and extra perk, and I'm not going to get caught up in min/maxing it. I'll just run my quests with whatever agents I can, and if I can't run the quests I want, I'll run some others, or just take a day or two off and let them recover.

    It just makes Overseer slightly annoying, but the overall benefit is clearly there.
  14. Tatanka Joe Schmo

    LOL, speak for yourself. I get a lot of benefit out of it.
    Axxius, BBQDawg, Riou and 1 other person like this.
  15. Quiverr Journeyman

    Yes it seems in EQ (especially Overseer) when the percentage is 10% chance for something good to happen the actual hidden percentage is 0.5%
    When the percentage is 10% for something bad to happen the actual hidden percentage is 50%
    Coagagin likes this.
  16. Axxius Augur

    They often give multiple Recover Agent options. And if they were working, you wouldn't have 10-15 incapacitated agents in the first place.
  17. Tatanka Joe Schmo

    Have to disagree. I see 2 recovery quests offered maybe 20% of the time. Usually always only one offered. Never seen three or more.

    As to the numbers, 10-15 incapacitated by doing quests about twice a day. So, seeing 3-4 incapacitated per round (some recover fairly quickly). There simply aren't enough recovery quests offered to overcome this.

    Plus, running recovery quests eats into the actual things I'm running Overseer for.

    Upon reflection, I'd probably skip starting this thread. Yes, it's annoying. But in the time since I started noticing this, I've been able to keep running the quest types I want. The main difference is, I'm not able to get nearly as many critical successes, so that avenue of agent growth is gone. But I haven't had any failures, and only had one instance of not being able to run a quest type which I wanted to run.

    I will concede this: "you wouldn't have 10-15 incapacitated agents in the first place."

    True. I'd have 6-10. And run fewer of the quest types I want to be running.

    And, again, if the recovery quests were working ;)
  18. Velisaris_MS Augur

    Recovery quests should be like the conversion quests and not count toward the quest limit.
    Barton and Tatanka like this.
  19. minimind The Village Idiot

    I like that incapacitation exists and the way it affects my play. It ensures that my resources are variably limited and that I learn how to use more characters. Without it, I would gravitate to the exact same quests and use the exact same characters. My participation in the process would simply be a formality.
  20. Natal Augur



    How many people really care?

    If 10% of your agents are incapacitated (which seems a lot, I never have that many, you are talking about an outlier situation here) you still have 90%, which is more than enough to do all the tasks available. There might be the odd one you can't do, but then just do some other one.

    It is not like you have to absolutely have the best team ever at all times to complete these, I don't think I have a had a single fail since they last adjusted the system. So what is the problem? Are you getting upset because sometimes you can't get 95% on the mission, even though it virtually never fails over 80% anyway?