Topic: New Assignment thoughts

DEV Blog 20-Dec-2012 wrote:

... assignment templates, where we only set the number and types of objectives that you have to do. The exact NPCs you have to destroy, or the minerals you have to mine, or the items you have to transport would be randomly selected from a pool of objectives around a certain radius of the location where you take the assignment... In the new system we also plan to scatter small assignment terminals around the islands

With the DEVs shortly about to start on this part of the assignment system in earnest I wondered what us players think these random objectives could be beyond mine it, build it, move it, kill it. These are some things I thought about.

  • Kill it type: Capture the flag. Your objective is to win something akin to a passive hack SAP on the NPC side of the field before they win yours. Multiple non-concurrent waves of NPCs spawn at random places on the field with suitable delay between them.

  • Kill it type: Assignments where you have to use a specific class of bot (assault, mech etc) to provide a decent challenge. NPCs will only spawn if you enter area of operations in that bot type

  • Move it type: Against the clock. Three or four scattered item submits within a certain time. Ambush chance by NPCs along the way. Gold, silver, bronze type reward structure depending on time.

  • Build it type: Something akin to specimen processing SAP

  • Move it type: Hack NPC field can/mission point by picking up clues from assignment objectives (qty of items in atrefact, qty of NPCs that spawn in certain area etc.

  • Mine it type: Hmm... struggling to think of a way to make these a bit more interesting

Re: New Assignment thoughts

  • Pure racing. This could be made extremely interesting by adding a turn rate or afterburner-type modules (which in turn could introduce a turn rate). As far as race types, well, we've got about 30 years of games to draw ideas from.

Overall there are excellent suggestions on your list. I will probably add another thread with thought on overall PVE mechanics to avoid noise when brainstorming here.

Re: New Assignment thoughts

I was thinking of something along the longs of a team based mission, akin to a raid in other games, where a small team of Players has to take out a small or large NPC gamma base.  Not destroying the entire thing, but something like, taking out a reactor, or a command relay.

Re: New Assignment thoughts

Ludlow, Devs are just going to change the missions to random, after steam release, most likely mission content will be changed

DEV Zoom wrote:
Celebro wrote:

Zoom, you broke down that part of the dev blog into 2 stages. Does that mean 2 patches or will you incorporate the random assignments and the assignments changes themselves in one go?

That's 2 patches, and the 2nd stage will likely happen only after the Steam launch.


But anyhow, good set of ideas, that many players would look foward too.

RIP PERPETUUM

Re: New Assignment thoughts

Celebro wrote:

Devs are just going to change the missions to random

That is step one, yes.

Celebro wrote:

... after steam release, most likely mission content will be changed.

Indeed. Thats why I thought we should get some ideas out there early before they really start work on it. Ideas of how, within the framework they outlined, to add a little more depth to assignments.

The proposed templates will go some way to giving assignments more variety but I fear that if the objectives are still all of the sort: 'Go to A. Mine x of y' or 'Go to A. Kill stuff come back' they will still be a little one dimensional. Such assignments have a place but something with more depth too would be great.

Re: New Assignment thoughts

Just some tips/insights for the brainstorming:

- Bossfights and group challenges are cool and all, but it's quite hard to set them up in an open world environment without any pitfalls. You either need instances for it, or you're going to have a queue. There is the way of not caring about balance, where the only requirement for the objective to complete is to be around when it gets completed by anyone. This is how Defiance does it - not quite sure whether it's a good thing.

- The more complex a task, the harder it is to figure out the proper rewards for it. Missions with fixed objectives can use completion statistics, but when a mission is completely built up from random objectives, our only guideline is the range of the objective from the pickup point (to include reward for walking time) and a very average guess for completing an objective type. This is even more important with time limited missions: if the objective is random, our educated guess for the time in which it can be actually done will make or break the mission.

Carry on smile

Re: New Assignment thoughts

I would like to know how you get your walking time ( one line between terminal and objective )  ?

Re: New Assignment thoughts

Heliaso wrote:

I would like to know how you get your walking time ( one line between terminal and objective )  ?

We haven't implemented this yet, but the initial idea is to use a straight line for the range, multiplied by a fix number to cover for terrain blockings. But we'll be looking into our pathfinding options, which would of course yield much better results.

Re: New Assignment thoughts

DEV Zoom wrote:

...Missions with fixed objectives can use completion statistics ...

One possibility with fixed objectives that would add some depth and make the assignment seem less repetitive would be to keep a score and reward accordingly. For example:

Go to interaction point A and pick up item. NPCs spawn. Go to point B and pick up another item. One Nasty NPC spawns in front of adjacent drop off point for both items. Once items are dropped off assignment completes.

Now, in the background "points" are given for doing certain parts. Say 480 points for time that ticks down every second between accept and deliver (so no time points for > 8 minutes). Some points for killing each of the first NPCs and some for killing the big nasty one at the end.

If what points are awarded for what objective are kept hidden and NIC reward is linked to points then it will take many times running the assignment to work out how to get the most reward for it. Do I run it fast in a shielded light and ignore the NPCs or speed fit in a mech and take the first spawn but ignore the last or do I tank for the nasty NPC at the end and ignore the first NPCs?

A simple addition to the assignment description such as: "You accepted this assignment before and you did poorly/ok/well/very well/expceptionally* and were rewarded with 80,250 NIC" could be a story type way presenting your "High Score" where how you did is in discrete steps and reward is continuous.
*delete as appropriate

Also can be a way that an assignment can be completed by a low EP player but not for maximum rewards. A small incentive perhaps if they can't achieve "exceptional" to save up some EP to be able to kill the final NPC or the first wave more quickly.

TL;DR A "High Score" type system for assignments might help add a bit of depth and make repeating assignments more fun.

Re: New Assignment thoughts

DEV Zoom wrote:
Heliaso wrote:

I would like to know how you get your walking time ( one line between terminal and objective )  ?

We haven't implemented this yet, but the initial idea is to use a straight line for the range, multiplied by a fix number to cover for terrain blockings. But we'll be looking into our pathfinding options, which would of course yield much better results.

well, in theory, when you got a pathfinding algorithm already, then getting the distance should be the least effort necessary.

but do you really want to go with the "mission HUB" approach? that concept seems to be outdated already, and avoided by new games on the market (http://www.mmorpg.com/showFeature.cfm/l … nally.html)
For Perpetuum it just means that the game will still be centered around having to enter a building for everything.

*Disclaimer: This post can contain strong sarcasm or cynical remarks. keep that in mind!
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Re: New Assignment thoughts

Annihilator wrote:

.. but do you really want to go with the "mission HUB" approach? that concept seems to be outdated already, and avoided by new games on the market (http://www.mmorpg.com/showFeature.cfm/l … nally.html)

That article's got some good ideas in it. I wonder how it could work with Perp though where the NPCs aren't really part of what's going on in NIA - they are just sort of here milling about in circles. I also wonder if the Nian world is still too small for that approach.

Makes you think though.

Re: New Assignment thoughts

Sounds nice, could be something for the future, but currently it's not an option for us.

13 (edited by Ludlow Bursar 2013-07-07 09:12:35)

Re: New Assignment thoughts

DEV Zoom wrote:

Just some tips/insights for the brainstorming:

- Bossfights and group challenges are cool and all, but it's quite hard to set them up in an open world environment without any pitfalls. You either need instances for it, or you're going to have a queue. There is the way of not caring about balance, where the only requirement for the objective to complete is to be around when it gets completed by anyone.

With the current assignment system and even with stage one of the assignment overhaul in place there will be a danger of having to queue. But ...

Beacons show us that there is already a system in game for specific players to be flagged to specific NPCs or even to specific spawns or multiple consecutive spawns of NPCs and for said spawns to evaporate into the ether if you ignore them. Attaching the same mechanic to an "assignment owner" and anyone who helps her/him out, coupled with the blog's promise of plentifully scattered assignment points should ensure that the open world isn't overrun.

You can take this a step further. If a second, third, fourth player flags to the assignment spawn then an extra wave or two of NPCs spawn to make the assignment that much harder.

If, for example, the assignment goal was to retrieve an item which drops from the final "boss" NPC and you had to destroy, say, 3 waves before he appeared, the trigger for a despawn (and thus assignment fail) rather than being 1 minute of no fire (as it is with beacons) could be having no assignment flagged players inside the assignment area of operations.

TL;DR Applying current  beacon flagging mechanics to assignment spawns would minimise impact on open world.

14 (edited by Burial 2013-07-22 12:31:45)

Re: New Assignment thoughts

- There should also be (instanced) PVP assigments where two teams compete for the completion of objective, be it kill some NPC or whatever, for increased reward. smile

- There should not be a set amount of assignment levels. It should be virtually endless and also the hardness of these assignmnets should scale to the level of the assignment.

- NPCs in instances could be generally harder to kill and drop items that are needed for new bots or tech manufacturing.

- Combined corporation assignments. Where one group of bots takes, for example, a mining mission and another takes combat mission in the same instance. Combats have to keep miners safe.

15 (edited by Martha Stuart 2013-07-17 17:27:23)

Re: New Assignment thoughts

I was thinking that there should be a horde mode assignment.  You put together your best fleets, and you must defend a certain area for as long as possible.  The Alamo/Battle of Thermopylae type thing.  This is where you could allow new players to use equipment that is out of there EP/Price range.  I would assume an instance of some sort would be needed,  but this could also be connected to a leaderboard where survival times are recorded.  You could even do something along the lines of the test server, where all the equipment is cheap, and you have max EP (Only in the instance obviously), So it wouldn't be about EP or NIC, just about best strategy, tactics, builds, etc.

16 (edited by Ludlow Bursar 2013-07-17 18:45:34)

Re: New Assignment thoughts

Once instances are introduced for assignments beyond tutorials there are all sorts of exciting prospects. Within the framework Devs outlined in the blog, however, giving assignments more depth is more challenging. I still haven't thought of a way to make a mining assignment any more interesting than it currently is.

I like the relation points idea that Tux alluded to here. We have points in industry and now in research, why not relations? I think relation related content would benefit greatly from a measurable "common currency".

17 (edited by Ludlow Bursar 2013-08-03 11:03:33)

Re: New Assignment thoughts

Had another couple of ideas to throw into the pot that could give mining/artifact assignments a bit more, if not quite depth then at least interest.

1. Artifacting and mining whilst on assignment could have chance of "escalation". A special token unearthed that when redeemed, cashed in or whatever would give co-ordinates of an objective area (similar to current assignment areas) where is hidden an artifact that is guaranteed to contain say a cortex, beacon, CT or, in the case of mining assignment "escalations", a whole bunch of PL-90s. The escalation may itself escalate.

2. Objectives for mining assignments rather than being "go mine X of Y" or "Go get 35 special ore pieces" could be more open ended. "Asintec needs Opacit. Will reward for anything between 10 and 100 pieces". That way if mining assignments and mining in general is your thing you could spend as long or as short a time as you like on them - up to a limit.

Maybe even introduce another special ore piece for each raw material that is only unearthed on Beta (and reward according ofc) just to spice things up a bit.

Re: New Assignment thoughts

I would certainly hope that walking time would be calculated for *both directions* rather than just getting to the objective.

19 (edited by Burial 2013-08-27 17:20:23)

Re: New Assignment thoughts

Corporation Assignments

> Corporation would get seperate corporation relations towards NPC mission corporations, in essence giving something more for corporations to grind together.

> Corporation relations would unlock corporation missions that are hard and long(i know what you are thinking Gunner), taking more than small group to complete. Since it would be hard to assign NIC reward for such mission, best would be to reward items that are needed for MK3 construction.(would also make lower level missions useful for light bot MK3 construction) cool

> Corporation missions are doable once per week per NPC corporation(so like, 9 per week if you are working on all relations?)

> Good corporation relations would give bonus rewards for individuals doing normal assignments.


That could be the "hard missions" that people are requesting. cool

Re: New Assignment thoughts

Bump.  How hard would it be to spawn an Elite Superior Observer every 24 hours. He drops T4 shines maybe a cortex or something awesome but he's 5 X harder than an observer.

something balanced around 5 to 7 people to kill?

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Re: New Assignment thoughts

Ville wrote:

Bump.  How hard would it be to spawn an Elite Superior Observer every 24 hours. He drops T4 shines maybe a cortex or something awesome but he's 5 X harder than an observer.

something balanced around 5 to 7 people to kill?

Have it deploy plasma bombs too! And his AoE damage should blanket the island killing all npcs...


No srly. +1

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