Redesigning missions

Hello all,

It’s been a common complaint around recently that people think the mission system isn’t really as satisfying as it could be. From talking to others and hearing their input I hear a couple big concerns

  • People constantly get missions for dungeons they really don’t see a purpose in going to anymore
  • There’s really no purpose to missions once you hit guildmaster
  • You basically only rely on getting missions of a certain rank to level up (E missions with their 5 points are basically useless, while 6* missions can basically completely carry your explorer rank on their own)

It’s basically to this end that I’ve written this post up. I basically seek to bring up some possible alternatives to the mission system to see what you all think.

The purpose of the mission system

One of the first questions I sought to answer was to see what people even wanted from the mission system. Again, from talking to fellow players, I’ve gotten many different answers:

  • A way of basically giving a purpose to exploring
  • Missions suited to the difficulty you’re currently approaching in dungeons – newer players should be getting lower ranked missions, while players with a lot more experience should be getting much higher ranks.
  • A different way of getting items than the endless deluxe box grind – one where you know what you’re getting and what you need to do to get that item.

This basically led me to my next series of questions

  • What dungeons should we be getting missions for?
    • Should older players really be getting sunny hillside missions?
    • At the same time, what if they wanted to give missions to newer players but found themselves unable to?
  • How should players get missions?
    • Getting missions only at each time change is admittedly very frustrating and leads to “clusters” of missions being available at once, rather than a slow trickle. Is there another system that could be implemented?
  • What ranks should people be hitting at each stage of the game?
    • Should this be a linear progression, pairing the level up in mission ranks with
  • What prizes should missions give?
    • Off that note, what benefits should each rank give?
  • What purpose should the mission system hold for players who have already hit all the checkpoints?
    • Essentially, is there any way to keep players interested in missions once they have hit master or guildmaster?
  • What do these ranks even represent, from a gameplay standpoint?

Honestly I actually had way more questions but I didn’t want this post to be an endless list of bullet points so I’ll cut it off there for now. I also do not completely address every one of these points in my proposed systems as well, but I still wanted to keep them there because I think they are very important questions that need to be answered in a redesigned system. Regardless, thinking of these questions led me come up with some ideas that I hope better reflect what myself and other players think the mission system should accomplish.

Proposed alternatives

Missions proportional to times a dungeon is completed

By far the biggest weakness of this current system, in my opinion, is the fact that players need to wait up to 4 hours for a mission that may, honestly, be pretty terrible. I could be online, actively running SF, and then I come to my mission at the day-dusk transition and it gives me a C rank mission to Tanren Tunnel.

The rank is not necessarily the disappointing point. Rather, it’s the fact that I never run Tanren Tunnel and I basically waited 4 hours to get a mission I’ll never do. This is frustrating. This first proposed system tackles both issues. Under this new system, a lot will still be the same. Mission progress is still related to beating dungeons and the same random mission at time change is still around.

However, there would be some additions to make the mission system more satisfying. From a “lore” standpoint, it makes sense that teams that are more active should have more missions on their job board. Under this system the following would occur:

  • Beating a dungeon every time after the first time will give you a mission to that dungeon, with a cooldown.
  • These missions will be unsendable and start off at the lowest possible rank that dungeon can give. As you complete these missions, you will increase your “rank” for the given dungeon. Higher dungeon rank means you will get better missions at that dungeon.
  • Mission prizes for these “completion missions” will essentially reflect items available from that dungeon.
  • Once you get to the highest ranked mission for a dungeon, you can get end box or secret room items as the prizes.
  • Rank must be kept or it can decay. In other words, once you reach highest mission rank for a dungeon, you can’t just sit on it forever unless you make efforts to show you’re a rescue team that actively does missions in that dungeon.
    • If you do not do a mission to a dungeon in say, two weeks or so, your missions will fall in rank until the lowest level unless you do them again.

This system, I’m sure, would be hard to implement. But I think it helps with a lot of frustrations. For one, people no longer have to keep waiting around to buy 6* SF missions. They just need to beat SF to get the missions to beating SF again. In addition, it stops people from not wanting to complete dungeons explicitly to avoid getting certain missions. It also gives people a reason to keep doing missions after hitting the “highest rank”, as there is a decay element in place. This system is not perfect, however, for many reasons.

  • People basically have to beat a dungeon twice to finish the mission for that dungeon.
  • It can be way too easy to get end boxes through this system. Harder missions would have to be devised in order to prevent people getting many easy golden masks or miracle chests from doing SF missions, or many remedial relics from an IV mission.
  • It is still difficult for people to pool many missions together to do in one go through.
  • Inactive players can find it really hard to build up the motivation to go all the way through and rank up in missions, and this could create a huge gap between experienced players and less experienced ones.

There’s other systems you could design that address the current problems in different ways. For one:

Missions based around recently completed dungeons only

This alternative is not one that I have fleshed out the idea for, but I think it is another possibility. This one gets around the problem of the other proposed system, in that it allows players to pool up missions for a dungeon and do them at once.

Under this current system, rather than giving you a mission from every completed dungeon, you would instead only get missions from the 7 most recently completed dungeons. This obviously helps players get more higher ranked missions if they do more higher ranked dungeons, which is a plus.

However, I do see a big drawback as well. Many newer players currently get help from veteran players in completing dungeons such as cliffside cave and sauna cavern. Under this proposed system, helping those players would resulting in the older player getting lower ranked dungeon missions as a result. This could disincentivize a huge category of assistance provided to newer players in the early game. In addition, it could still lead to escaping in earlier dungeons vs completing them through, which is a problem on its own. In addition, it doesn’t really address the problem of unsatisfying mission prizes. However, at the same time, it’s a really easy fix that can bandage many of the current systemic problems. Overall, I’m personally not a huge fan of this system, but I think it has benefits.

I have one last proposed system that I want to discuss in this post.

Proportional mission rank to dungeons completed.

My other two systems still allowed for the possibility for more veteran players to get lower ranked missions if they chose to. This is because I think it’s valuable to be able to have that ability to send missions to lower ranked players. However, talking to other players, many do not see the value in getting any lower ranked missions at all once you’re past a certain point in the game. While I personally disagree, I think this is a completely valid point to make, and one I think this third system does the best at addressing.

Under this system, the mission system would basically be the same – random mission at a time change. However, instead of the mission being completely random, there would be weighting done, proportional to the amount of dungeons you have completed. For example, players who have only beaten two dungeons (say seaside cavern and pebble cave) would get lower quality missions than players who have beaten a wide variety of dungeons (the players who beat seaside cavern, pebble cave, tiny grotto, seafoam cove, sourroot cave, etc). This would basically scale up until it reaches the players who have beaten all dungeons. These players would have their missions most biased toward higher ranked missions. This system has many benefits. For one, accounts that have beaten only Tanren Tunnel and Tanren Chambers (as existed in the past) are not able to “game” the mission system as easily. In addition, it rewards players for exploring the map and checking out all of the dungeons this game has to offer. It also alleviates concerns about being a player who consistently beats up on Mysterious Jungle and Seafloor Ruins and getting a Happiness Lake mission.

Conclusion

In my opinion, the mission system does not currently feel really fun or engaging compared to the potential it could have. All the systems I proposed have drawbacks, but I think all come closer to providing a mission system that is more satisfying to players. I didn’t address a lot of problems in this post, and I am obviously not a coder, so I do not know how difficult these systems would be to implement. However, if possible, I think they would help us go one step closer to reaching a better-balanced mission state!

For sure, missions need a massive overhaul.
-Generation rewards those who are online or AFK online while those who have to get off for hours, maybe days, come back to none or 1 mission.
-No incentive to share it. Unless the reward is good or the difficulty (6* typically). This really only benefits those wanting to rank up.
-The more dungeons you complete, the more spread out your selections are. Most of the time, it’s going to be E to C for having 20 completed.
-Mission letters are unbalanced. At one point, i made a list of all the dungeons that give missions. It was pretty much a wavy line with, i think it was D having the most while 6* having the least. 5, 7, 9, and i think 10 are unused.

I do hope the system gets redesigned so that it gets the community re-involved with exchanging missions with each other. Some ideas i do have.
-Sharing. Being able to share with as many players until you do it, delete it, or overwrite it.
-Overwriting. This feature would allow you to overwrite a new mission of the same difficulty over the same difficulty. (C on C but not A on E).
-Party/Guild Share. As long as players remain in the same party they can exchange in said party. Same goes for guild members.
-Selling. Staff could set the prices for each tier and allow players a margin (maybe 5% higher or lower).

But, i have a feeling that the missions are hard coded, which means it can’t be altered.
Which brings me to another point. Redesign everything. Not only can this make the game more modern (PMU 8) but can also be a fresh start for the community. Which can give everyone new paths to make.

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