Missions seem to work out nicely

Discussion in 'PlanetSide 2 Gameplay Discussion' started by Longasc, Mar 28, 2014.

  1. NinjaTurtle

    True.

    It is also good to point out that it is better to add the system to the game gradually to iron out the bugs bit by bit than it would be to attempt to put a completely final version in all at once
  2. WyrdHarper


    I'm just not sure why they didn't do this on test instead of on live. The first iteration has been on test for a month, but they haven't done any focus-testing. Malorn's been great about feedback today and has been assembling tweaks, but those should have been done with focus tests like they've done on PTS before, instead of on live. It doesn't currently make a big positive difference to live play, so I personally feel that there was no need to rush it to live until more features were implemented and tested, instead of the "throw it to live and balance it after" beta-testing mode that people dislike.

    I think it's something that is bugging older players because it's a very hand-holdy system. They're clearly working on new player retention, but mechanics only go so far. The things that really help retain players are outfits and good squad/platoon leaders. Better tools for those would go a long way towards long-term player retention, but implementing things that makes them unhappy directly hurts it (removing base capture timers on the HUD is especially damaging, and is going to make many outfits not want to run public platoons).
  3. Malorn

    The reason it seems like "training wheels" is because we want it to make a reasonably correct decision for new players and for poor squad leaders or players who inherit squad lead and don't realize or give their squad objectives. Yes, a veteran player and most peple who visit these forums know where to go, but in-game that is usually not the case for most public squads and newer players. Players shouldn't have to be forced to learn how to read the map and predict zerg flows to know where to go to get a fight when starting out. If the missions it is giving are obvious and the ones that you'd likely be doing with your squad anyway then it is behaving correctly and meeting expectations for this first release and lowering that learning curve.

    That's the foundation. From there we build on more things like squad features, sub-mission types, etc and expand it. But before we do that we need to get the core foundation tuned and working properly. That's why I'm looking at threads like this one looking for cases of false positives and getting feedback on how the system is functioning. It'll be tuned a bit over the next several weeks and get feedback from the players on how best to improve the core while adding to it.

    In addition to that core functionality we also added squad-cohesion improvements like the squad bonus and delegation which encourages players to stay with their squads. Often times when I go into a public squad I see players in 3-4 different regions and often in different fights. This was to help reduce that and reward more for teamwork and cohesion.

    One thing I observed yesterday while squad leading was that I didn't really need to bother with squad waypoint unless it was a location different from where I currently was. All I needed to do is go where I wanted the squad and the mission system did the right thing with few exceptions. It allowed me to be a bit lazy as a squad leader and not have to worry about keeping waypoints constantly updated (which is one of the most annoying things to me as a SL). That's a nice convenience as a squad leader and showed me that in the typical case the system is behaving as expected and useful to me as an experienced player.

    Not everyone is like me and I understand there's the case where you intentionally send players away from where the squad is or the squad leader goes away and wants the squad to remain. We have solutions planned for some of them (like the squad mission sub-objective and mission locking), and others we will be reviewing and looking into improvements that can be made to lessen inconveniences in these cases. More will come, and it will certainly be more interesting to the higher tier players. Those higher tier players are crafty enough to work through the minor inconveniences that exist at this time.
    • Up x 13
  4. Ostekake

    Is the mission text covering up the capture timer of the current zone you are in, an accident or intentional ?
  5. Wecomeinpeace

    I noticed at one point the mission system insisted on me defending a main facility that the enemy had no connection to (Mao to be exact - held all surrounding territories uncontested atleast one base up the lattice).

    Other than that, it technically worked. Haaa-chu *options please* Ah, sorry about that. *sneeze* ;)
    Also you're on a roll here marlorn. Thumbs up for that. :)
  6. WyrdHarper

    I'm going to continue to play with the system, but at the moment, I still feel that it forgives quiet/inattentive platoon/squad leaders (especially public ones) too much by allowing them to be lazy and not communicate with their squads (as well as relying upon the mission system instead of their leaders), while punishing more organized groups by taking away information and giving squad members something extra on which to fixate.

    Those kinds of platoons being "led" by someone who just pushes up the lattice occasionally setting a waypoint are very bad for the game, as they suck up a lot of potentially good new players into zergfits or end up being a night of zergy ghostcaps that aren't very fun. Leading is probably the most skill-based thing in this game, and I'm not sure lowering the skill floor is a good idea in this area, as it's something that has a massive effect on player retention and fun.

    On the one hand you could argue that people hopping on to join a casual platoon might not want to have to worry about orders and such, but at the same time, in our outfit experience we can fill a public platoon with 24-36 public people in less than five minutes, and our public platoons are extremely organized, with lots of rather complicated orders and specific details about movement, relying upon very attentive squad leaders. If you assume that people are smart and will follow orders, they usually will, and they'll usually do very well as a group while having a very fun time--even relatively new players to the game can do very well when in an organized squad.

    I worry that this system gives people not willing to talk or organize more tactically an excuse to sit back at the head of a squad and not do very much, which can give a bad impression to new players.
  7. AMARDA


    Yeah, when I lead squads or platoons I am always looking at the map, trying to get people into the right places in facilities, keep them organised, etc. BUT! I also want my people to have initiative when engaging in certain activities. The current missions system doesn't seem to be flexible enough for what I need or want and just adds unneeded information to the HUD that distracts people from where I need them to go.

    What I would like to see is a priority system added so that each player can set what parts are most vital to them, like Timers and Cap Points ALWAYS overriding any Mission Text when inside a base, or other things like that.
    • Up x 1
  8. Masterofm


    As air one tends to have to move around the action. Either in 12-24, 12-24 fights or where your team tends to be winning, or moving around behind enemy lines to pick off random loners. But this means that one is crossing lanes all the time due to the fact that an area can quickly become "too hot." Especially when you need to set down and repair or get ammo as it tends to be specific points.

    Personally what bugs me about the mission waypoints is they are really big and they block visuals when moving towards a base. Normally when you need to go take A point it looks like

    __ __
    | |
    . A
    |__ __|

    But with the mission point it is this giant huge swirling thing that makes me sometimes unable to blast infantry holing up in the building or point (shelling it from 100 + meters away because anyone who goes right up to the point is in for a world of rockets/AA and C4)

    For instance I was trying to shell people and tanks running out of a biolab but I could hardly see them, and even if I Q'ed them up the icon would vanish behind the mission waypoint itself. Since the point was so large (covered over 60% of the base of the biolab) I basically couldn't hit anything.
  9. Mastachief

    How about an upcoming toggle system off?
    • Up x 3
  10. Kanil

    I got 6 or 8 mission changes while walking from Abandoned NS Offices towards Howling Pass Checkpoint. I was trying to walk up/along/at the bottom of/generally around the hills to the south, and it kept trying to send me to another base (Zurvan Storage Yard, I think.) that was about a kilometer away, and 500 meters (or more) further away than HPC. My slight zig-zags (navigating hills is hard!) would then put me back in range of HPC and my mission would update.

    It was mildly annoying, but only mildly so. Still, it probably shouldn't be giving you a mission twice the distance away from your current one just because you moved 25 meters in a given direction.
  11. Tuco

    Missions lead naïve noobs to their death if they follow missions directions in wwiionline. The experienced players ignore it and don't die so much.
    • Up x 1
  12. Noktaj

    Solution?
    Make mission optional.

    All problems solved.

    I'd give up a 15% bonus anytime in order to see what's going on in the BASE I AM IN instead of not being able to know who's capturing what just because I'm not in the same base of my squadlead.
    • Up x 4
  13. Kerempooh

    We can all yammer here about this or that detail that needs to be "ironed out" but the core premise of the system, as it stands, the "feature, not a bug" is currently annoying a lot of people, me included, to the point of leaving for being unable to play.
    By deliberately hiding the current cap timer and cap points from the UI unless you're where you're "supposed to be" this game is turning into something I want no part of. A tightly directed railroaded experience with sleazy passive-agressive blackmails to funnel you where you're deigned to be by some boss high above. This is not what was sold to me when I started playing. And no amount of "refining" the way objectives are set up can alleviate this - unless the mission objective becomes the place you happen to be standing on, and in this case what is the point of missions at all?
    Again, I'm not playing this game anymore until I can freely choose where to go and meaningfully contribute to my faction in my own way. I will not be sleazily blackmailed to "do what I'm told." I have enough of that nanites in RL, I don't need it in my leisure time.

    Missions are ok, I was all for them, as they were described before this implementation. And yes, there is great potential to them, and yes they will help new players and squad cohesion, eventually. I myself was looking forward to using them in the moments where I'm not in the mood to run with a platoon or go solo. I considered it a nice sweet spot between these 2 extremes for those moments where I just want to shoot stuff and not bother to much with thinking where I should go next. However, by implementing it this way it is now serving almost the exact opposite function. Just make local cap timers and points visible at all times, like it used to be, and make missions an optional directional pointer that gives you a nice xp bonus - you don't have to yell at people and threaten and blackmail them to have them listen to you, in fact you'll most likely create a strong opposite reaction. And you can tell that to your marketing department too.
    • Up x 4
  14. Noktaj

    Well said.
  15. Kemano

    I was in a squad, and not certain as to whether squad leader was at the defense mission or if I was squad leader at the time. I do remember there being hostile aircraft present at the defense mission shortly prior to the delayed switch to capture the next base.

    I seem to see it most frequently when we have secured and cleared hostiles from the previous lattice link, sometimes the mission goes from capture X, to defend X, delaying to secure Y, even though contesting Y would remove lattice to X and no immediate threat to X being contested is present.

    My personal thoughts tend toward either defense missions persisting due to matching capture missions on the opposing faction, or influence from vehicles or aircraft persisting due to the delay to mission updates for those inside.

    Also, three things I would hope to see in mission phase X:

    1) Ability to view point status and timers for a base regardless of mission status or location. I had a fellow member in my outfit be unable to view the status at Freyr Amp even though he was able to see [C] on his minimap. I also noticed that I would have similar problems while being in an aircraft, even though I was maybe 75-100 meters above an outdoor point.

    2) Missions influenced by population as well as proximity, as well as missions for multiple lattice lines. It was frustrating when I was seeing 25-48 friendlies advance to Lithcorp Central despite very few hostiles being present, followed by mission switch to defending The Bastion simply because all missions had set Lithcorp Central with no one going down the other lattice link with hostile control. Rewarding newer players to blindly zerg back and forth between two bases, or teaching that all our forces need to be fighting in the same place seems like a detriment on some level.

    3) Broader range of mission types, since having seen defense missions that were triggered by a 3/3 Liberator with a pair of ESF escorts at a base with no AA turrets and lacking cover from aircraft several times has been upsetting. Newer players, which missions are designed to assist, are becoming victims of experienced players with not much chance of retaliation, since the only default option for AA is a single burster on a MAX which isn't nearly effective enough to balance the fight. In addition, being in a purely airborne or armor-based squad and having a capture mission when no infantry are present is a lose-lose scenario in my experience, as leaving my vehicle risks both its survival as well as my own, yet if no one flips the point, our forces are effectively removed from having any effect, and many skilled snipers seem to set up positions in these situations.

    I do tend to hope that allowing player-generated missions while squad or platoon leading will address most concerns with 2 and 3, but as someone who will often be at a point waiting for the lattice link to activate and now being unable to see the timer at the previous lattice link now is frustrating, as I often lack a means to communicate with those at the other base. Control over the mission UI to some degree would be a major improvement, though disabling it is pointless given most players would prefer 15% xp while in a squad over enough information to make informed decisions regarding priorities.
    • Up x 1
  16. SShocK

    Exactly what is working out nicely? All this "mission" thing does is put a huge *** waypoint on the next (obvious) place in the lattice.
    That's not a mission. It's only more unneeded screen clutter. The whole lattice is linear and artificial enough already.
    Players need to be able to generate missions for their platoons, it should not be some automated thing.

    I wan't to disable this mission stuff, it's annoying as hell. Why force this on people SOE?
    • Up x 1
  17. Kerempooh

    Tho I'm very vocal in criticizing this missions thing, I can see the benefits... in certain particular situations, like dunno if i don't want to bother with actually thinking where to go next and just wanna shoot stuff (and who isn't in that kind of mood occasionally?), or if I'm a particularly uninspired squad leader lacking in RL leadership skills so i have to resort to some in-game flashing graphics and xp rewards rather than personal charisma, reason and clarity of command in order to get my troops in line. In short, it's a nice thing to have around if you need it. However, severely gimping any other playstyle except the two I mentioned by deliberately and sneakily obscuring absolutely VITAL game information unless you conform is... pretty much the opposite of everything I've learned to expect from PS2 and why I actually play(ed) this game. It's just reprehensible and has to changed immediately. And then we can talk reasonably about the minutiae of who goes where and why.
  18. BlckJck

    Good idea, terrible implementation. Firstly, let people turn it off and use their own intelligence rather than your hand holding. This has the potential to be very good but currently it's just annoying, no matter what I'm doing i have it up shouting all over the screen.

    Removing the visible cap timer on bases where the mission isn't is also possibly the most stupid decision ever. Stop trying to force this on to veteran players who know more about running squads/platoons and moving around the map than your automated system. If you want to help new players get into and stay in the game improve the outfit and platoon management systems. Incentives palying together rather than simply putting more and more flashing lights saying "ZERG HERE!"
    • Up x 1
  19. MasterCheef

    I'm okay with putting up with the marker if that is what it will take for them to refine the mission system. It has great potential.

    I hope it gets to the point where PL/SL become more concerned with capturing the objective than hopping around the map. I would like if the mission system can guide the entire faction in the most efficient way possible and leave PL/SL to strategize on how to best complete these missions.

    Hopefully the system becomes reliable and trusted and only HIGHLY competent PLs would try to override missions.
  20. Kerempooh

    Would you really leave faction-wide strategic decisions to an AI? Do you really think this would improve the game in any way? o_O

    And besides, that "hopping around the map" can be a hallmark of superb strategy lol. My outfit regularly wins alerts precisely because they know when a fight is lost and when to retreat, regroup, relocate.. You really think banging your head at an AI designated objectives would add more sophistication to the strategic layer of the game?

    Also, is it fair to the players to give that kind of responsibility to a blind AI? You have aggravation enough from the fact that current base rotation noticeably impacts outcomes of alerts. Now factor into that a falliable dumb AI runnng the strategy.. it would be a total disaster. You'd have QQ-ing all over the servers, cries of "foul" all over the place, total collapse of any sense of responsibility and faction pride ("it's the stupid AI that made us loose!") I'm already expecting that to start happening since missions do funnel a portion of the players to the AI-designated objectives. Again, "We could have won if only our dumb missions AI didn't decide we should be all taking the Crown, and those damn scrubs listened..." No. Just no.
    • Up x 1