Quantity of accepted Missions should be limited

[Brok Ironfist]

Yeah, I said number of missions allowed to be accepted at once should be limited.

[Exousia]

Yeah, I said number of missions allowed to be accepted at once should be limited.

Well, I remembered it because I thought it was a decent idea. I should probably go find the thread and say as much over there. I myself don't have more than 20-40 missions at a time that I'm doing, just so I'm not hogging them all. Sometimes I skip an hour or two just to make sure someone else gets a chance. Not everyone's as altruistic about it as I tend to be, however.

[ãłþħά-∆9]

I like that suggestion alot too, it would limit alot of things without being too...limiting
But how many is too many? I do 50 or so decrypts at once when I do do them, maybe faction missions could be seperate..or not

But the people it will also effect is deleters, people who do 100's of delete files one after another wont stand a chance and will be forced to do faction missions

Can we split this topic from hereon and make it a seperate suggestion? (I know its elsewhere, but needs its own thread i think so it doesnt get drowned)

[Brok Ironfist]

The thing is, it should force people to choose missions based upon their value.  It should also provide ample reward for missions completed.  Having to accept 500 delete missions to stay competitive doesn't work.

Right now, people have to complete hundreds of missions just to keep up with virii installers.

I'd say starting out something like 5 or so missions can be accepted at once.  As you gain levels with your faction you can accept more.  Maybe the max of something like 20 or so for the highest faction levels.

In addition...  I'll say it again.  Get rid of virii as a source of income for players.  Make them missions.  Missions should be the focus of the game.  Not farming virii.

[Exousia]

I'm not sure about the elimination of virii as an income source, but I can see your point about shifting the focus of income toward missions.

The reason I'm not too sure about it is because it will reduce or eliminate casual players and shift the game to favor those with nothing better to do than do missions. Yes, I know you're trying to counter that with limited mission quantity, but if we also make missions exclusive to whoever has accepted them missions also means that there's no competition for them, even if they are limited. Casual players rely on a certain amount of virii income to keep up. I don't have a problem keeping up doing a combination of virii and some missions on the side. I see the real launching point where lead players take off as the point where barons are installed.

Perhaps we need to nerf the barons instead, but I also see eliminating them as a potential imbalance.

[bontrose]

an extra possible mission for killing barons?(not just you)

[Exousia]

Define possible.

Right now, with current disinfect time on barons, I'd consider any mission to disinfect a baron improbable at best.

[Brok Ironfist]

Virii files and casual don't go together.  Not many Casual players can install a .3 file share, let alone a robber barron.  Most will concentrate on their .1 fileshares and place them on the public server or spend most of their time trying to capture an existing virus.  Others may attempt to do disinfect missions but will get their processes killed and themselves destroyed in the process.

If Robber Barons become fubar like I'm expecting them too, then I'll just concentrate on destroying the little guys from now on anyway.  Casual players won't have a chance if the bigger guys loose the need to keep their AP up while waiting for the big files to install.  300+ hours was way too long for the big files to install....  Having them killed within a few hours of activation will be painful.  And by painful, we'll have 5000 AP to go on a killing spree.

So... that's why I'm recommending virii get dumped to missions only along with limited missions.  I was up to 80+ virii installs.  I'm thinking that Ivan is up there and possibly more.  How does that help casuals?  Only reason I'm not destroying all virii right now is because of keeping my AP near max so I have the AP to pay for my robber baron install.

I'm not saying all missions should be exclusive either.  Big $$$ missions should never be exclusive.  But make some $500 hpd missions exclusive so as to allow a casual player the chance to actually complete missions.  As he gets better he can go up against the $5k missions and start doing some real PVP.  But he needs the chance to get there.  Delete missions for 50 hpd doesn't help them out much and anything much higher becomes increasingly difficult to battle against.  Waiting 50+ hours for that delete to finish and realize someone else has already completed it can destroy a new player...  Heck waiting for 12 hours is hard enough for them and then realize it was deleted hours ago...

With the new rule on barons... Not many will ever get more than a .1 installed.  The .5's will never get installed since it would be too easy to just by IP's and kill them.

[Exousia]

Nice, you've thought this through then?

[Brok Ironfist]

Yeah, while I've been thinking that it is completely unfair that 2-3 players could in essence tie up the whole game, I'm not going to stop until the rules are changed.  My opinion though, is that it is killing the game.  It's too hard for a newbie with little gaming experience to get into a game like this. 

They need nourishing.  They are easily discouraged.  Any mission they try to complete is completed before them.  Any disinfects results in someone hunting them down.  They don't know enough to cover their tracks.  Some are just learning about bouncing while others attempt direct connects.  Hardly any even do an IP change or can afford one.

The result is they choose a mission that ties up their whole resources and come back the next day only to see it was already completed.  After a few days of this they'll wander off and never come back.  Another IP in my private list that just gets used to bounce through.

[Brok Ironfist]

I don't think faction missions should be separate (when it comes to counting total missions allowed)...

In fact I think all missions should be faction missions.  After all your goal is to help out your selected faction....  Delete missions against your own faction seem counter-intuitive... If your faction where to find out they'd do more than just dock you some faction points as happens right now.



I could see the following possible scenario working as well:

Remove the option of choosing a faction.   
All missions are faction missions.
Allow players to choose any faction mission they like. 

Completing a mission rewards faction points as now.  Attacked faction would incur a 1.2* reward penalty (you earn 100 faction points for the completing faction but get -120 from the opposing faction).  This would allow players to freely move from one faction to the other and even possibly have 3 factions in the positive if the person carefully considers their targets.  But being positive with multiple factions reduces the bonus you get...

If only one faction is the positive faction you get the current 10% bonus. Two gets 7 % bonus each. Three gets 5 % bonus each.

If the person manages to attain level 20 in a given faction, give them a bonus 4%(single faction) / 2% (dual Faction) / 1% (triple faction) to their faction bonus. 
          Thus a three-factioned player with all factions at or above level twenty could get a 6% bonus total. 
          Two-factions would get a 9% bonus.
          A single faction player would have a nice 14% bonus.

A player who starts working on opposing faction missions would SLOWLY start to loose their current faction standings instead of instantly dropping to zero as currently happens when they switch factions.




AP Rewards for faction missions

With the advent of all missions becoming faction missions, the AP rewards need to be rejiggered.  I'd suggest that the faction mission reward .5-.75 of what it costs to complete a mission as the reward, instead of rewarding more AP as it does now.  This would remove AP overloading, period. 

[bontrose]

put in a new 2 factions and have them major enemies of the megacorps

tr(keep) - violently opposed to megacorps and believe that the whole world should have a say in all businesses (anti-Hakuza)

freedom.org - loudly opposed to megacorps believes the net shouldn't be used for profit (anti-Omnicron)

scientists united - believes knowledge should be spread through the world (anti-Icarus)

the standing would be lost as such

if you are under a mega-corp you lose
x power per mission in other megacorp
2x per mission in freedom faction(other than big enemy)
4x per mission in big enemy faction

[Exousia]

@Bontrose:

MOar factions?  I thought we already had some polar opposites.

@Brok:

I have to admit, it didn't make much sense having "generic" missions in which you could potentially be working against your chosen faction. With such a system, however, it would eliminate the possibility of being non-aligned but you really don't have that option as it stands anyway.

Very interesting idea, though, having to pick and choose which missions to do based on the target rather than the source.

Another idea we could use is to take the idea of exclusive missions and basically have "contracts" where the factions offer the specific player missions based on their standing in the faction. Simple deletes at first and moving on to disinfects, codes, and destroy. It would only be one single mission at a time from each faction this way and a faction would cease to offer once you had a negative standing.

Would that work well with your proposal?

[Brok Ironfist]

The contract idea is an excellent idea.  Especially the idea based upon their standing in the faction.  The lower the standing the lower quality and quicker the mission.

I would even think that it could be that way for all missions, to be honest, only offer missions to a player based upon their standing in the faction.  Kind of like a 'trust' list.  Don't trust the hacker, don't offer them a high-paying/high risk job.  If they want into the faction they need to prove themselves.  Work their way up the ladder.

In that way, the faction would offer level appropriate missions.  High levels wouldn't be fighting low level players --unless they switched factions, but they'd move up the standings quicker as well anyways and quickly away from the more casual player.

[bontrose]

i was saying more faction so each corp would have a direct enemy lesser enemies and low interest foes