Development Cycle Archive
Thread: Desired Rewards
Generally:
Take out holocrons and instead have 5+ separate holocron missions, verrrry long, and unrepeatable, and geared to the different classes., that would stop holofarming as a profession, allow force npc's to drop a wider range of interesting loot, and let crafters and others find a non-violent path to the force (shouldn't there be one?)
80% of loot that drops now from many lower-level npc mobs are chapter-related garbage and force crystals, in the future I think removing these from the drop tables and making them mission rewards would free-up the loot tables to drop more interesting stuff, even if it's just interesting NEW garbage.
Variety of the remainder: It seemed to me that I used to find alot more odds and ends when i started playing, weird clothes from certain mobs, and guns or decorations and odds and ends (spice jars, etc), I'd like to just see more variety on drops and a wider range of loots for all mobs...This would bring camping down alot, as you wouldn't have x100 people waiting on the crystal hunter to pop.
Specifically:
- Less garbage cdef items and the like.
- Better "buried treasure"
- Weapon parts like barrels, etc, that can actually be used to make a slightly better gun (the current ones are trash, pointless loot).
- Small supplies of better resources.
- Beginnings to unique misisons in the form of encoded info.
- Better skilltape from a wider variety of sources.
- Stuff that does something "fun", like temporarily buffs an odd skill then disappears, or changes the appearance of a gun beam,armor coloror something.
Hmmmmm wanting to fix loot and not wanting to upset the craters. Well then have the npc's drop stuff that can't be crafter I.E trinkets, furniture,more items that can be used by cratftersand what ever else you can think of. I think the best npc item I got was the Bwing flight suite doing the Princess Leia Missions. Of Coarse you can always give me my drodikas : )
Master Droid Engineer
50% TK
There's alot of great ideas here and it's nice to see A dev team that is consistantly interested in player feedback on these kind of issues.
I only have one request, that when these quests are updated and new rewards added please PLEASE PLEASE reset the quests so that the many of us who have already completed many quests and only recieved a broken whatever can complete them again for a decent reward.
As it stands now I'm scared to do any of the cool looking quests for fear the rewards will eventually change and I will be locked out from redoing them. So if this is planned please let us know so that people that feel as I do can have fun doing quests without worrying that we are going to be punished later when the rewards are updated.
) but I'd DIE to get those clothes the Nightsisters are wearing, or unique clothes that are useless, whose sole purpose is to look unique, and to say "I've been there and back." Maybe hats you can actually look at without giggling ? (Come on...a fez ?)
Pink Fluffy Durni Slipper Schematics...but seriously...more clothing schematics would be nice, there is a LOT of clothing that has been seen but isn't craftable...such as some of the stuff shown in the old 360 screenshots...like the twin pistol holster belt worn by the Bothan Male, as well as the rest of his outfit.
(Also MC Hammer pants for Wooks would be nice *grins*)
I first want to say that there are some really good ideas on this thread and some of my opinions and ideas will probably be a bit of a rehash of what has already been said.
1). Have the rewards be unique and match the difficuly of the task required to receive the reward. If the missionrequires killing a group of storm troopers then the reward should be at the very least comparable to a level 25 rebel mission and should award about 6000 credits. The quest should also reward an amount of faction points greater than 10 or 15 that is currently awarded for the rebel theme park missions.Currently, Ican get alot more faction points by killing a stormtrooper base during a stormtrooper mission than i can from a quest that requires the killing of storm troopers. Therefore the faction reward should be closer to 100 faction points than 10-15.
Even if a unique weapon or piece of armor was awarded I do not believe that this would hurt the economic balance all that much for 2 reasons. a). The weapons and armor will decay and eventualy need to be replaced. b). These missions can only be done once so the armor cannot be reaquired by repeating the mission over again. These weapons and armor could offer benefits such as high resistances for one damage category and an extreme vunerabilty to another kind of damage for that armor to balance it out. For weapons the HAM cost of special movescould be jacked up higher than for normal weapons to balance the greater damage that they could cause. Having unique weapons and armorthat give tactical advantages in certain situations but are vunerable in others is the idea here.
2). The Completion of a certain set of missions could reduce the skill point cost of a specified profession or allow for an addition of a skill point. I realize that you as developers do not want this game to be all about power gaming. I however feel that as a player I always want to be improving my character if only slightly by my actions. Currently, after I master a profession I feel the need to drop the profession in order to master more professions in hopes of getting closer to unlocking my FS slot. As the game stands right now, the only way to improve ones character after mastering a profession is to work towards unlockingthe FS. One way to change this would be to offer a set of difficult quests that would be offered to a Master ofthat given profession. On successful completion of a group of missions the reward should be either increasing of max skills points by 1 for that characteror reducing the cost of the skills within that mastered profession tree for the character. This way the player could hold onto the profession they have mastered at a reduced skill cost as well as relearn the skills within the profession should they choose to surrender the skills then come back to the profession at a later time.
3). After finishing a certain set of missions have a hint revealed about unlocking the FS. With all due respect to all of the devs, the holocron idea had good intent but it is ruining the game. Right now if you want a hint on the FS slot you have to camp out, wait for spawns then fight over looting with other players. Or if you have 3-5 mil credits you can buy one. Wouldn't it make more sense to offer these clues for unlocking the FS slotin a series of difficult missions instead? I can't speak for everyone but I would find that a heck of alot more exciting.
At the very least I would like to see the quests in the game offer loot and faction points equal to or greater than what i can get from grabbing 2 missions from a terminal. As a credit to the devs the story for the quests are well written but they justlackany reasonable form of compensation making them very unattractive and somewhat of a waste of time. Keep in mind these quests that we are talking about can only be done once so if unique loot was given the player could not repeat and reobtain the rewards. Please make these rewards count. Thank you and keep up the good work devs.
Didnt read whole forum post but one thing just popped up
why dont u give away enhanced rings and stuff like rings with good enhancments like ring of thunder with electricty protection or something
well u can name enldess rings of power or amulets kind of things with fun stats and likeley u will wear em on specific hunts or something or just to show off 
Well I hope you devs are still reading this, becuase most these peopleare CLUELESSwhen it comes to keeping players addicted and wanting more. A few good concepts have been touched upon but suggestions on how to implement them properly in a way that would benifit the individuals who received them and at the same time not unbalance the game are lacking. (although I have not read 80% of these 60 pages.)
Imo, rewards, ALL rewards, fall into ONE catagory.
STATUS SYMBOLS. Now dont get me wrong this game has status symbols applenty and ive seen some ideas for some here, but you're going about it all wrong, bear with me.
The most addicting factor in a MMORPG is the opportunity for the average joe to log in and be someone they are not, but that alone is not enough, the real kicker is giving them the OPPORTUNITY to not only be someone they are not, but also be someone, something, they want to be, this could be many things, popular, powerful, respected, idolised, unique, envied, part of a great organisation or movement, the list goes on.
When adding new rewards the thing I would suggest doing is making a list of things people want to be, and coming up with ideas that play into as many of those things at once as possible without unbalancing the game.
What makes a status symbol a good status symbol? lets take a look at a few examples shall we? using my list of criteria I listed above. Now remember these are only a few of the criteria, the list is a long one. But this is just for example purposes.
Major criteria are those that every good status reward should garner, minor and lesser rewards should be means to obtain the major rewards.
MAJOR:
- Respected
- Envied.
- Idolised.
MINOR;
- Powerful.
- Popular.
LESSER:
- Unique.
-Part of an organisation or guild that is one or more of these things.
An example of a poor status symbol are the story and POI badges, never have i seen such poor incentive to take part in any actions in my gaming life, acheiving these badges results in the attaining of NOT ONE of the underlying criteria for rewards in my list. Yes badges may result in unforseen results way down the line, but unforseen rewards is not on MY list, yes it might be on some peoples lists but surely not mine, speaking of unforseen rewards i'll touch on JEDI a bit more later on.
Ive seen some suggestions for unique clothing or decoration, this is only a little better then badges since it does meet the unique criteria, still I wouldnt respect or envy anyone who put a few hours work into getting a unique pair of pants... unless those pants did something special.
Going up the list a little bit is acheiving master status in an elite or hybrid profession, at one point in this game doing this met a few criteria (about the first 3 weeks) but now really means nothing, you've made it WAY too easy to reach master in this game, as a result you of course had to make the rewards for moving up the skill tree minor at best, which in turn limits the degree of difficulty you can apply to creature encounters, which of course in turn results in you not being able to give out very good rewards as a result of creature encounters without seriously unbalancing the game, and so on. THATS your number one mistake SOE, you should have aimed for three months for the very uberest powergamers to reach master in ONE elite or hybrid profession, instead you aimed for the first JEDI in that time. More on that later.
At this point I would like to point out that any reward givenMUST have an equal risk or work element involved to balance it, this is critical in obtainingthe majorcriteria, since you cannot respect or idolise someone who didnt work for it, more on JEDI later.
Going on with my list of example rewards currently implemented. Faction perks, Faction perks is one of your better content ideas so far, seeking these perks can keep even a powergamer occupied for quite a while ecspecially now that the exploits/bugs have been cleared up, my only complaint here would be PRACTICAL USE, you guys have been all over the spectrum here, most items on the faction perk list have NO practical use (that is worth the effort involved) I.E ST armor and faction perk weapons, I can get better crafted for a fraction of the work involved. On the other end you have something like the AT-ST that has TOO MUCH practical use which resulted in people who could solo things like krayts and kimo's, I understand that AT-ST's are going to be taken out of common creature encounters, GOOD FOR YOU, this coming from an imperial with a few of his own. Hopefully this will allow you to increase rewards on alot of the creatures that are CL 50 or greater. However you need to look at faction perks because once AT-ST are nerfed there is really nothing in their worth the effort IMO, make sure the faction perks go for the same criteria as rewards in general.
At this point I want to point out that not only is it important for rewards to have an equal work element involved, but also that work elements have an equal reward involved, again more on JEDI later. HAHA.
Crafters/schematics, their goods and their criteria, same but different- I thought i'd touch on this seeing as so many people have suggested tweaking this stuff around. A crafter wants the exact same things as a hard core adventurer, but they will need a whole other set of rewards with all the balancing issues that go with them, I could go on for hours about content and risk/reward but im trying to keep this as breif as possible, so all I will say is that I am a strong beleiver in risk or work VS reward and with crafters I'd be VERY weary about unlimited rewards for limited work or risk, for an example, the first time an architect makes a heavy mineral harvester, he must first grind out the skill, get the materials, and take his chances on the experimentation, however once he has a schematic and a surplus of materials the work involved in making a heavy mineral harvester is reduced exponentially, the second, the tenth, the THOUSANTH item crafted is much easier then the first, indeed requiring little work at all, yet the reward stays the same barring competition, which is another chapter in my book. The long and short of it is that a crafter currently has the potential to earn infinately more money then an adventurer given that they have the right schematic and materials. crafters can spit out 100 items in the time it takes the adventurer to find one. Yes crafted items will devalue at an accelerated rate yet it is usually too late in the case of the first crafter to get the materials, or the first crafter to get a schematic the damage is already done and they have made a billion creds already.
Giving out unique recipes or schematics is a REALLY dangerous idea, be carefull.
Now on to the greatest reward of status - JEDI. This is the best reward in the game, it meets all of the status reward criteria on my list (at first glance), and I bet 40-50% of paying subscribers are playing in hope for this reason alone, along with the 15-20% or so who are playing to ebay and 30+ % of the casual gamers who havnt eaten up all the (worthwhile) content yet and 5 -10% who are just hanging on cause they have nothing better to do. However the idea is FLAWED, and even though it meets all my criteria for rewards at first glance I have not put more then 20 hours work into acheiving it! why you ask?
For one simple reason, the means of obtaining the reward is unfair, meaning, I may have to put 200 hours of work into getting jedi while the next guy has to put in a thousand, different work, same reward. Indeed you are not garaunteed of getting the reward no matter how much work you put into it, Id be willing to put in ANY amount of work as long as the next guy had to put in the same amount, because this is the only way I can have any repsect for not only my accomplishment but for his as well. How can I respect someone who could have just been lucky? how can I idolise or envy someone whom I hate for being lucky?
Example of a bad reward system = player (a) walks by random spawn after wandering for 2 hours and receives major reward quest, player (b) wanders for 10 hours and never sees said quest npc. BAD BAD BAD. This is what I meant by unforseen rewards,NO person is going to wander the desert for ten hours in the hopes they might find something they have no idea is there, not for ANY reward,this is why there were NO jedi until holocrons were released and why their wouldnt have been until random player_04_ was LUCKY enough to stumble accross the right steps in about 2 years or so, or insane enough to complete every profession (which would have been perfereable to this luck system imo) and why the only jedi now are those who have used up their holocrons and who happenied to know or have done the other steps, which just makes them less lucky, not more dedicated or reward worthy.
Sorry for the long post, I have strong feelings and high hopes for this game and wanted to help as much as possible.
Karnij.
skill enhancers would be nice. they used to drop when armor barely decayed and clothing did not. decay kills armor and clothing fast if uninsured so enhancers will leave the game faster than they are currently coming in.
I started doing a quest once... fought a snadperson captain and his buddy and when I got back the guy gave me a knife... I felt like shooting him.
I blew off quests after that.
This is a no brainer... go on a hard quest get a reward equal to the effort you had to use to acomplish it.
Rare alien weopons/ armor.New cutting edgetechnologies or just bags and bags of cash... the point is I'm not risking my neckfor junk.
How about armor & weapons that don't kill us when we use them? Or modules that we can give to crafters to ensure this does not occur?
Right now, armor is mostly useless for the high-end combat folks. Any fight that lasts over 30 seconds means u cannot wear armor, as special attacks run through your HAM as fast as the enemy hitting you.
I mean, most people I know (Master Elites in Combat Professions) wear cloaks, maybe a helm for PvP, and bodysuits/clothing. You ever wonder why that is?
Armorsmiths really don't make anything that is useful enough to overcome the penalties, and this is after months & months of some of them getting the best of the best.
No matter the material, no matter how good it is. In a decently long fight, you can't wear any armor. The impact is too great.
How about loot that is unusual & semi-unique? That may be the only useful things left to try since you are so dependent on the crafter system (great for economies, but bad for giving people a goal to strive for).
How about a semi-rare vehicle type? A special mount that is awarded? A special crate of weapon mods with a 100% damage bonus for min/max? Especially since a weapon mod does not normally last through a single fight. A crate is pretty much a minimum to be even semi-worthwhile....
Basically, I would like to see much much more content for people that are a bit lower in skills - and that work with 1-2 combat oriented folks instead of 5-6 or higher groups. It is much easier to organize groups of 2-3 then 6-10.
Tracklor