Continuing the discussion from Legendary recruitment: Just going to make a new thread for this so it’s not mushed together with Legendary Recruitment.
There’s a big problem with linear progression when it comes to the mission board. Having a lot of low-leveled missions when on the higher ranks is problematic. With missions being time-based, no one is pleased when they’re aiming for a high rank and end up getting E to D ranked missions. That why I feel there needs to be some sort of “boost” towards higher-ranked missions with higher ranks.
For example, when you’re at Normal Rank, you’ll have a higher chance of getting E and D rank missions on the board than the higher ranked missions if newer players were carried. On the flipside, a Diamond Rank user should have a higher chance of getting A and S ranked missions than lower missions.
Having it follow the PMD series is a poor idea with the time-based board. It always has been. You may have players saying “oh, just have someone share missions with you”, which I argue with “who?” Most newer players don’t know how to share missions (or are unwilling to share it with strangers and share it instead with friends), and most older players would have to drag newer players through a dungeon just to share their missions. Also, the PMD system refreshed the board each time you cleared a dungeon. I feel like the mission board is extremely outdated and needs to be updated to share more missions that are unique for the player and not for the missions (or maybe just give more missions out in particular).
All thoughts and opinions would be appreciated!~ Especially since I felt a little too biased when making this. Make an argument to counterbalance my own, please!
Agreed with this. I’m guildmaster rank and 90% of the jobs I get, I just delete because they just aren’t worth doing. They’re all c rank or lower at very low level dungeons. Would really love to missions improved.
Also possibly look into item rewards. From the high ranked jobs I do manage to get the items I get in return are pretty lack luster, especially with repeat items.
this is a decent suggestion, and i hope it gets looked into.
the mission board is a very crucial mechanic in the pokemon mystery dungeon experience and as it currently exists in pmu, it leaves a lot to be desired.
currently when a mission is generated, its difficulty is random as you can see here. as this is hard coded it is slightly tricky for a developer to just update while the game is still up. for example, if at a certain rank you can get missions E, D, C then your chance of getting any of these is 33%. when you rank up and have access to E, D, C, B then your chance of getting each of these is 25% (just an example). while the chance of getting bad missions is lower, than before it isn’t doing you much favors cause better missions are just as hard to get. the math in the system needs to be reworked such that there is some form of straight-line arithmetic progression in landing missions of higher difficulty. but there is a lot more than just back-end improvement that can take place with the mission board beyond just linear progression.
mission rewards are horrible and extremely outdated to the point where you may have to retrieve a reviver seed for an oran berry as a reward (yes this is real) pmu has evolved a lot over the years in terms of how item value has changed and the mission system is really doing a major throwback. i genuinely believe that certain items / recruits should be exclusive to the wondermail system - this would encourage players to do missions and also share them with friends / sell them. this would give the mechanic unique and better value. moreover, pokemon mugshots and escorts beyond a certain pokedex limit do not show up as clients for missions. furthermore, the flavor text for mission information is repetitive, bland and boring. perhaps there may be new mission types rather than just existing 3 (rescue/item-retrieval/escort) for eg: clearing a monster house at a certain floor, summoning a legend for a client and etc.
someone in a separate thread mentioned that dynamo sands and cryptic chasm should yield missions of the same level of difficulty as sf. this is agreeable and can be done by a developer in an instant - the range of mission difficulty offered by a particular dungeon is easily altered.
(fun fact: mission difficulties in the pmu wondermail mechanic go up to 9*, they just haven’t been released yet)
the system has a lot of potential to enhance gameplay, let’s look in to this soon.
Place a mission board in each region, due to the large amount of dungeons it’ll be easier to access the level of dungeons both appropriate and for the level you are intending to run. This will also fix returning to grass root no matter where you complete a quest. It is also a possibility that each region gets a new quest at each new time of an in game day, for example Winden Night, Tanren Dawn, and so on.
Re-balance the Explorer exp requirements themselves to be more linear, by either
A. Adding more ranks in between Master *** and Guildmaster
B. Spacing out the ranks so they aren’t so close together, since most of us end up skipping ranks this
is my personal favorite although this would cause issues with people “losing ranks”
Have the mission level and exp rewards coordinate with the time it takes to complete the dungeon, as well as the level, using this logic Dynamo Labyrinth would be the highest, ect.
I feel like the ranks shouldn’t be too linear. I recall suggesting that the ranks be updated to Gates to Infinity’s Rank System, which would be much more balanced for PMU in my opinion. A bit of expansion from “Perfect” Rank could make it work pretty well.
This would be a good expansion since ranks do go up to 9*, so having larger dungeons have missions in those upper ranges would be pretty nice.
Great comments, Demetrius!~ Also, great analysis using the game’s code, Festivo!
Bumping this, and asking staff what about this is still planned to happen and what’s already been implemented, it’s been 8 months since the last post, and although we have gotten very nice changes in Mission exp. I asked, and bump because there is still a demand for regional mission boards, which were suggested again here, and have been brought up again, and have been since 2012, see Mission Boards in other regions. and I think it’s better to bump this than something from 8 years ago, especially considering this is under planned.