Bio Engineer Archive

Message Edited by ArthurDentOnBria on 11-10-2004 11:44 AM

Not really. Yes, you can rationalize it like that, but why give a group an incentive to have non-participating members in it? In what way does that positively influence the game?

I don't know if they fixed this or not, but there used to be a corellary exploit to the "solo missions for high pay" exploit, and that was one where you'd get high xp. About 6 months ago my then guildmates would run quenker missions over and over and over when bouncing from one pvp fotm template to another and would always pester me to "group" with them even though I have no combat skills and am just hanging back in town doing the crafting thing. They claimed that it gave them a, I believe it was 25%, xp advantage to complete a mission by themselves while grouped with others, than it would give them if they were not grouped. I always refused to participate in such nonesense, but that always bothered me, why that would be the case. Another obvious loophole that I hope they close or have closed as well.

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Acrod_Novys wrote:

Work with me here--but didn't you just create an argument against the TC change?

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Message Edited by ArthurDentOnBria on 11-10-2004 02:18 PM

Message Edited by mozter2112 on 11-10-2004 03:04 PM

Spazzers,

The way I look at it is there are two problems with solo groups. The first is that if the mission difficulty and pay determination was in any way accurate, it would be challenging for the entire group working together to complete that missions presented to the group by the mission terminal. But that determination is so far out of whack, that any individual member is able to complete the mission solo. That is the first problem, and I think that is one of the reasons why they are doing the CU.

The second is just a matter of mission pay mechanics. If you are grouped, but are screwingaround elsewhere, anddon't participate in any way shape or formin the completion of the mission, and are not even in vicinity of the mission when it is completed by your comrades, it's pretty much a no-brainer that you should for all intents and purposes not be "counted" as a member of that group when it comes to xp, pay, bounty, etc. right? I think the TC "fix" is attempting to address this point.

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Spazzers wrote:

SOE is treating a symptom and not the problem. If the purpose is to stop people from soloing high end mobs and getting mass amounts of xp, as one theory has it, the high end mobs should be tougher. A master artisan with a little bit ofrifle skill,armor, and buffs can run around dath soloing rancors with little effort. That is the problem. Taking money out of the combat profession's pocket is not the solution.

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ArthurDentOnBria wrote:

If you are grouped, but are screwingaround elsewhere, anddon't participate in any way shape or formin the completion of the mission, and are not even in vicinity of the mission when it is completed by your comrades, it's pretty much a no-brainer that you should for all intents and purposes not be "counted" as a member of that group when it comes to xp, pay, bounty, etc. right?

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Work with me here--but didn't you just create an argument against the TC change? If you're not counted as a member of the group for pay... then those who are counted get all the credit (literally, in this case)

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???? yourself. You could be right, there are no certainties here, but I don't see it. Look at it this way... if people who have relied soley on mission pay in the past are now suddenly only able to earn a small percentage of what they were before, is that going to increase the number of people interested in hunting for high quality organics or decrease the number of people hunting for high quality organics? That's a no-brainer right? And if someone is earning one-tenth of what they were before, are they going to be willing to spend the same amount of money on weapons and armor, and buffs and all that as they were before? Or will they be spending substantially less? To me it's pretty clear that prices will be dropping across the board on goods and certainly organics as well, and everyone will feel the pinch.

If you want to know what the economy will look like without solo-missions, you need only look back 12 months and see what it was like before solo missions became popular.

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Taalar wrote:

???

How much do you pay for a good spawn of Dath carn meat? How much do you pay for Corellian or Naboo carn meat with the same stats, or how much would you have to offer to get the same quantity? If this goes into place, the price of meat will jump substantially. When I make on offer for meat, I take potential mission payouts into account. Since creatures do not drop adhesives/+25 SEAs/holocrons/crystals etc, mission payouts are a big a selling point for getting people to hunt for me. Already my scouts are complaining thatfaction basesyield better xp andmore valuable loot. Unless they make some changes toPvsNPC combat too, we'll come out pretty bad on this.

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Taalar wrote:

...And another thing, do you want to fly around dathomir for several hours just -looking- for a mutant rancor? I rely on "solo groups" to get missions for creatures I want to sample. With these changes, we may see a return to days of people screaming "squill mission party forming at the starport" and that may be a good or bad thing overall for combat, but I sincerely doubt I'll find 4 people who are willing to wait 10 minutes per mission for me to get all the dna I can before they start firing.

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You can get mutant rancor missions? I have never seen one. How much do they pay? For that matter, I don't think I've ever seen a mutant rancor lair. I *do* fly around Dathomir just looking for a mutant rancor...and for all other creatures I sample. Most of the creatures I want don't seem to show up on the mission terminals. Finding the sample creature to begin with is part of "the true cost of making a pet," which was a discussion on this forum several months ago.

As for solo missions, they are a symptom of two problems, not the problems themselves. The first should be addressed by the combat rebalance. The players have become too powerful with respect to the missions. As a result, group missions are not as fun as they once were. Enraged bull rancors go down far too easily, and there are no missions for harder mobs as far as I know.

The second problem is that the mission terminals don't effectively detect the combat ability of the players. If they were working correctly, then someone who can solo an enraged rancor lair should be able to get enraged rancor missions without being in a group. A mission terminal should take into consideration buffs, sliced weapons, etc. It should also randomly give missions above and below the group's level. Whether a person should be able to solo an enraged rancor lair is another issue entirely.

For me, the game was much more fun when going out after an enraged rancor lair left me with the feeling that few would be coming back alive.

As for using mission terminals to get BE targets, I would LOVE to see BE mission terminals that do this. I would love to see a lot more BE content, period. The force sensitive quests illustrate my point. BE experience converts to increased sensitivity and crafting jedi XP, but a BE by virtue of being a BE cannot unlock either of these skill trees. Only the combat-related skill trees of reflex and combat are available for a BE to open. Furthermore, many BE's use scouting skills and medic skills to some extent, but again these convert to trees that only a master artisan or master medic can unlock.