Dev Notes #20 - Mission System Hunting Mission System Since the Entropia Universe mission system was introduced in VU 10.8.0, there have been continuous updates to the system to increase usability, improve features and expand into new areas of gameplay. With the original introduction of the mission system, there were only five missions available; this number has grown over the years to more than 4000 missions currently available in Entropia Universe. In this Dev Notes article we’d like to inform you of our plans for the most significant overhaul of the mission system to date, which is planned for release in the third quarter (Q3) of 2019. Planet Calypso will be the first planet to introduce the new mission system. The other Planet Partners will transition to the new system soon afterwards, once any issues are resolved and any necessary tweaks and adjustments are implemented. Main Features Hunting within a team or participating in a Shared Loot event will now reward all contributing participants relevant progression in their missions based on relative contribution (whether the contribution is made by damage dealing, healing, or scanning). Missions requiring kills of a specific creature will automatically begin whenever a qualifying creature is killed, removing the need to first interact with an NPC or mission terminal. Once a mission stage is completed, an interface will appear with reward(s). The next mission stage will automatically begin, even if you decide to choose rewards for the preceding stage at a later time. Bestiary The Bestiary is where you will find all relevant information regarding your avatar’s current progression in Hunting Challenge missions. Implementation As this is a completely new system that will replace the current mission system, progress in existing missions unfortunately cannot be carried over into the new system. Therefore, we are taking this opportunity to give all participants an alert to the upcoming changes several months in advance so that they have time to complete any active missions. There will also be a grace period where both the new and old systems will work in tandem, during which time kills on qualifying creatures will result in progress on both the old and new versions of the Hunting Challenge missions. This grace period will extend approximately one month from the implementation of the new mission system. Example You have the current “Iron Atrox IV” mission active. After the implementation of the new mission system, for each kill of a qualifying Atrox creature, you will receive progress on the new Atrox Hunting Challenge mission as well as on the legacy "Iron Atrox IV" mission. If you fulfill the requirements for the Iron Atrox IV mission during the grace period, you will receive the usual reward, but you will not be able to begin the legacy Iron Atrox V mission. Instead, you will automatically receive the next stage of the (new system) Atrox Hunting Challenge mission. When the one month grace period has elapsed, all missions from the old system will be disabled for all participants. Progress will no longer be possible for the deprecated missions, and uncompleted missions will not provide any rewards. There will be a similar grace period of one month from the implementation of the new mission system for Planet Partners. More info and specific dates will be provided as the Planet Partner implementation draws nearer. Source
And again they gonna fuck everyone. If I was still playing I would be furious, now I don't give a damn that I lose that stupid progress. What makes them so sure they can resolve issues these days? Yeah the math would be to hard for any CPU on this planet. Just tell the truth, you wanna make sure people are even losing more. Yeah only took some years for some people to get where they are atm, they now can easily finished it in some months to come. Another way to do a quick cash grab, and alot will fall again for this, skills are worthless anyway. Mindark, masters of BS. Edit: And for my own little protest, not that it will matter much. I have removed all EU videos from my channel, I considered this before this happend all ready, but now the time was due, to do it. They now have earned a permaban on my channel.
You are completely right. This is definately the next move to become costly to many players. Hell, I am happy as well that I was able to leave this Muppet Show five years ago!
ARE YOU FUCKING NUTS? Counting shared loot kills for missions and starting missions automatically certainly could be implemented in a way that doesn't require to dump the existing missions system and all existing missions. Sorry to say, but to me this is the most significant "fuck you, we don't care about players" change since I've started playing EU. I'd recommend to drop this idea immediately and also fire the person(s) who came up with it.
I think they’re trying to make everyone leave EU but I don’t understand why. It all got too complex for my ageing brain to comprehend a while back (with all the added weapons, pets etc.). As well as being too expensive for my level of income. None of my old mates play anymore or if so much less often. Nor have I the patience nor motivation needed to make sense of the new controls. I’m even starting to not care about logging in to prevent them stealing my account! Maybe this is their endgame?
Oh, how lucky we are that it's just abandoning ~90% of the missions we have... Totally unasked for. And due to the wikis we have totally obsolete. We do have a shitload of issues in EU that should have been solved 10 years ago or so, but yeah, let's just build a totally obsolete, rudimentary ingame bestiary... Whatever MA does it reminds me of Bill Plympton's persons with confused priorities (example at 0:54) No shit? Who could have foreseen this... Maybe you should have created actual missions with NPCs, locations, branchings stories, etc and not bullshitting yourself through the mission system and call "kill 40000 of X" a mission at all. This shit should not have been created in the first place. If just EU had a tiny glimpse of exciting gameplay besides that gambling shit. We flew to the fucking moon 50 years ago and you tell us in 2019 you cannot create a backend editing interface for very very simple missions in a game, so simple they actually don't deserve to be called missions??? Well, it's probably just the price for pioneering bleeding edge innovation such as the never seen been before EU mission system... Let's face it, these are not missions, it's just the dumbest of the dumbest plain little silly gamification, even stuff like Farmville would feel ashamed of... Auto-looting, auto-questing, auto-shooting, common, make it an idle game already, the only exciting thing it has it the gambling shit, why not dump all the useless bloat around it? Oh, players don't want to be punished for playing together in a MULTIPLAYER online game, what a surprise... You mean like those few in the part of the mission system that you won't touch? It's not an adventure, it's a fucking grindfest of the worst kind. If you want adventure do not create iron "missions", create missions, you know, the ones with factions, NPCs, branching stories, locations, environmental storytelling, puzzles, challenges, etc. And now you want a participation badge? For not realizing that the mother of all dumb ideas was actually dumb before everyone telling you it was dumb? Why the fuck don't actually ask players about their opinion about before wasting shitloads of resources? You have access to the source code of both systems and all the data, fucking everything can be compatible if you want. What's the point of a system where you can just start shooting whatever you like and at some point choose whatever reward you like? It's completely redundant, apart from the very very obvious effect of a Skinner box. You haven't read mine, good for you, and I actually was really nice... Closing words (this is where it gets constructive): Create motivation to play by exciting gameplay beyond clicking the same bunch of pixels 40000 times, by story-driven dramatic missions that makes us continue to play just because we want to know what's gonna happen next, by elaborated detailed environments with secrets to discover that really encourage exploring, by challenges to overcome with knowledge and actual skills instead of by the auto-use tool, by an overall conclusive setting that makes a unique game world, not by a unique payment model.
VU 7.4, New Skill System, which made natural skilling EXTREMLY harder and attributes gains impossible for people over 100, made a lot of high end players and rich players think to leave the game, thinking they are betrayed. This is how mind-dark made available an attribute which was stuck before = stamina, became an attribute we can rise, to keep the player base who was already bored by unfinished features and promisses that never come. And also, they introduced missions rewarded by attributes. Later those attribute missions were replaced by skills mainly, and less attributes. Now they remove all by clearly fucking up all players, who are and who have been PAYING A LOT to do those. Without forgetting and I saw for myself since september 2004 VU 6.0, that mind-dark have ALWAYS been ruining our avatar possibilities, reducing our speed and such, making our "money investment" just a big rip off, but asking us to pay for tools to recover parts of those we were robbed. Thieves asking people to pay for what they have just been stolen, must be this that mindark talks about in their swedish tradition. And after they DARE to accuse people to cheat or do exploits and lock their accounts. Andrey got his account under investigation since a good year now, but this new feature is not money manipulation mindark right ? yeah how could people qualify you beeing anything else than just... scammers ? In the swedish tradition to be fucking thieves and to rip off all customers & investors. Remember the Nea ambulimax flat lands, which now have hills everywhere, but MA claims they changed nothing. Or the LA with underground facility which was made impossible to set, and MA never did anything, what a shit joke... There is really no police in sweden ? This is still displayed on the login page, july 2019. The so classic hypocrisy and total lack of professionalism. Visit a terminal today and get screwed tomorrow, by Mindark.
I have a data overflow error atm I have no idea were to start about the stupid response from them. First of all, you morons should overthink and instantly try to explain better what is going to happen in the OP. No instead you just post it, and did not forsee the shitstorm comming? yeah right. All those shitstorms you create should be on some good gaming sites, to warn people about this incompotent company. (Or were ever to give those clowns some good exposure on how this company fuck their customers over and over, year after year) They should be mentioned in the guinness book of records, for creating the most shitstorms in history. And then the explanation is still BS, as some indeed see thru. But hey, you achieved it again (sort of) some are thanking you on the knees for this info, and change. (forcing people to depo and finish the meaningless missions, and robbing them from the wasted $ on the missions they can not complete) Ahh whatever, fuck them.
A "bestiary" was suggested by players. Also a way to share killpoints in team or shared loot settings. The impossibility of this and the tendency to introduce ever more and longer solo grinding missions took away a lot of the old game's spirit. People didn't want to do anything together anymore because the point only goes to the one with the best equipment or skills. I guess most didn't bargain for such total upheaval though and are naturally upset at the announcement. Yours truly is no exception. But aren't we beginning to see a pattern in how the "new MA" approaches problems -- with a big hammer. Maybe they can clobber this game back into something you actually want to play again, but if not, what do you lose you haven't lost already?
The problem is not about changes they make, at least I have no problem with that. But stop stealing in public from your customers. (Many times this happend before, and will continue untill people are finally fedup with those clowns.) But ofc that will never happen as there always will be new victims that will fall for the BS they promise. How about we all come over to HQ and grab $1k from your money? and say, All trades are final. Every year they change events, rules blah blah, and every year they fuck this up also, and still people go full tilt when they release it. (Do they ever learn from the past that MA isn't capable in delivering something that is working from the beginning?) Camera changes, me personaly I actually like it. (Still bugged ofc, nothing new actually, maybe fixed in 10 years) Mission points based on contribution, hell yes, finally. Taking down the missions that people have open and not finished yet, is plain stealing invested time and money in mobs that don't even have a decent loot table. (We don't kill them because they have such awesome loot hidden somewhere) And here also every mission open on all planets and progress ofc in them, untill i decided to stop shooting at all since almost 2 years now. I don't have the newer missions open that came in those last 2 years. And yes they can convert the open mission points to the new, don't tell this BS that it's imposible, they just don't want to, as that is free (wasted, stolen) money for them. Probably going to stop commenting on this BS. For the believers, have fun with the Muppetshow. Tickets for the next show available now online. (Each show can be canceled without further notice, we don't do refunds, so be sure you wan't to buy the tickets.) >
MindArk want old players to quit, more quitters = more PEDs they can screw out of disabled accounts. Every skill not chipped out and withdrawn is a net gain for them too.... who is going to check on MindArk transferring skills from disabled accounts onto auction for them to profit from? The only thing consistent about MindArk is how consistently they fuck the player base over....
I'm interested in seeing some examples of the new ways missions are built up. And, like Tass, I do hope it'll be better designed than "Don't bother me until you killed 50.000 mobs". Their suggestion it's impossible to port old missions over seems odd. I'm sure there will be some new form of iron missions, and moving data from table a to table b really isn't as complex as MindArk seems to make it sound. I do this for a living, and I'm a fucking moron. And apart from Iron missions, what the hell else is there really? The iron missions might be the only ones you'd actually get cheated out of. All the other "story-driven" *cough* quests were pretty lame, too. "Go to these coordinates, then go here". "Collect this, then collect that". Every MMO has them, and most of them get boring real quick. I get the need for the ability to quickly set up some missions, and the copy/paste with some slightly changed wording and/or mobs/locations, but if a dedicated game designer would be allocated to creating missions that extend the lore of the universe and/or planet, that'd be great. I do appreciate the extended grace period. Lastly, why on earth do they keep insisting on favouring Calypso? Calypso is run by the least creative team, so we already know the initial mission output will most likely be fucking lame. These guys are completely out of ideas, or otherwise we'd have seen something better than "wave event 5.121", "<insert holiday season> mayhem" and the other recurring shit. Why not hand the new tools to people who actually know how to design a fucking game first?
If I remember correctly, Calypso is back in Mindfuck, uh Mindark hands? (Or at least it's their baby) And then ofc they do not wanna cooporate with planet partners, all they want is to compete against them, and suck them dry also. Mindfuck just sees them as customers also. Hence why most Planet Partners have a hard time to even develop and release content. Everything has to be aproved by Mindfuck, and ofc paid to Mindfuck to be released. Imagine the potential if they would be able to cooporate, instead of fight against each other. But ofc Mindfuck does not wanna go uphill, they wanna go downhill, it's easier. Narrow sighted clowns are they, nothing more and nothing less. After all these years they still don't know how to let a company grow. (In a healthy way) As long the real world shareholders are happy, they keep doing this, because they don't know better. And the playerbase doesn't seem to know that they have the power to change whatever they want, but they seem to be stuck at the thought, OMG I can't play for a week, or whatever. You get the point I think.
Tass nailed it. In fact, between Tass and Jan, you've said anything I could have said. A part of me pondered for a moment that maybe I should try and get in and work through some of the "story" missions I've had on the go for years (if they still work) but then I thought, "no the control system is still just too unusable, and I CBA to AHK up a fix for it... I'd rather spend my time on something else now. Strange... this is the most "Don't care" I've ever felt about Entropia. I've been meaning to sign in to check stuff for Tass for a week or more now. Still not happened, was gonna sign in tonight, didn't happen. Unlikely to now as it's late and I have some other things I want to do before bed. Sigh... maybe in the Autumn. Or if I can ever sort out some holiday. Wistrel
One year is enough to complete some missions that you consider decent. Making all stupid missions like snarg, cornu, atrax, atrox,ambu etc atm its a fucking waste of peds and i would not advise anyone who cares how much money they deposit. Myself i focus on general skills since rest are eazy to gain. So i finished most of the decent reward ones like 100-150 peds athletics/courage reward missions. Im for exemple on stage 6 hogg (0/60k) will give me 200 anatomy. They can reset this shity ass mission.
I think the problem for me is how I define 'mission' vs 'achievement' Most current missions I would more classify as 'achievements', but there are some actual missions out there..... would be sad if this does away with any semblance of missions and only 'achievements' remain.
Before actual mission system we had first one . Old or first when mission were introduced. When they changed it in actual one all rewards were halved. Missions which once gave attributes were changed a lot to give less attributes and less other skills. Typical and noticeable was stamina. Also on change mission system at that time they talked same like now. about change, about grace period. But nothing about rewards nerfing.
Well we got nerfed many times over the years, and indeed they never tell us, we all had to find it out ourselves, some were obviously noticeable, some never noticed by most people, if you didn't collected data. But these changes are almost never in the favor of the customer, they will squeeze some extra pecs out the people. I'm almost sure that it will be expensiver to do these new system missions, compared to the old ones, time will tell. I will not be collecting data to see if it is, as I don't care anymore. And I crunched a pretty ammount of numbers over the years, I like stats. :) To me this game was a challenge to play without depo, and I always managed pretty well. But the challenge is gone for me, the goals that I had are obsolete now due to all these changes over the years. The goals that I have now do not require data crunching, and don't require generating decay for them. All it requires is lean back, watch this Muppetshow, and count the pecs.
