Like the subject line asks. I find it frustrating when I want a particular gathering mission, say level x biochemical samples, and not see any available. So in order to bypass this ridiculous problem, I send all my crew members on said levels missions, leave the area (usually to my ship), quit the initial missions, THEN pick what I initially wanted. By no means is this a game breaking time sink, however imho its completely unnecessary and seems like an easy fix.

Be careful what you wish for. You may just get it. They obviously WANT the missions randomly available. (almost certainly harder to code it this way than to simply display all the available ones, though I would argue it's a horrible decisions).

 

Presumably the "correct" fix would be to eliminate the needless time sink by simply keeping track of available missions even when you're offline so logging, zoning, changing chars, etc. doesn't rerandomize it. No need to log/whatever. Have to instead send one companion off on a super short mission while the others grab the unwanted longer ones.

 

Pretty sure that wouldn't be the fix you'd want though.

Actually if you log off and log back in, you will get a new set of random missions. I do it all the time with my alt toon especially for underworld metals (I keep getting missions for companions gifts almost every first log in).

 

So you log in, send companions to gather if the wanted type of mission is available, log off/in until you get another one of the wanted missions, of a new random set.

 

Not the solution you are asking for (and I would like to see as well) but it works like charm for me atm. Well I keep spamming the guild channel with log in/out messages

Edited May 31, 2012 by Thimitra

Actually if you log off and log back in, you will get a new set of random missions. I do it all the time with my alt toon especially for underworld metals (I keep getting missions for companions gifts almost every first log in).

 

So you log in, send companions to gather if the wanted type of mission is available, log off/in until you get another one of the wanted missions, of a new random set.

 

Not the solution you are asking for (and I would like to see as well) but it works like charm for me atm. Well I keep spamming the guild channel with log in/out messages

 

See, that's exactly what I'm talking about in my original post. If there is a known way around whatever reasoning for not putting all available gathering missions up, then why have them randomly generated in the first place? Its a needless waste of time. By the way, you don't have to log on and off for that to work, just go somewhere which needs to have a load screen (I.e. from your ship to a planet, or vice versa ).

See, that's exactly what I'm talking about in my original post. If there is a known way around whatever reasoning for not putting all available gathering missions up, then why have them randomly generated in the first place? Its a needless waste of time. By the way, you don't have to log on and off for that to work, just go somewhere which needs to have a load screen (I.e. from your ship to a planet, or vice versa ).

It does not guarantee that you'll get mission you're looking for, and while it doesn't sink your money, it does steal time. And because of that' it's low on to-fix list.

 

Whole mission system works only because they are random, so you don't just go to shop and order 20 gems or whatever. If you want to quickly get big quantities of something, trading with other players is proper way.

Gathering missions here are quite simple considering when I played another game in order to gather some resources you needed you had to go survey, see if it was dropping and then spend time looking for a place to drop a harvestor. And sometimes you had to survey all the planets to find that current resource. It could take up to hours or even a couple of days to do it.

It seems like such a small change but it's one I'm hesitant to make. It would increase the amount of crafting materials to the point where they'd probably not cost more than the missions to go get them, if not less. And with so many mats people would have far more blue and purple recipes. Not sure if it would make crafting easier or worthless as a money making option.

@ScarletBlaze, I hear ya. Even ME1 was fairly cumbersome to gather. Tons of games were in the past, but a lot of developers realized it was starting to take away from actually playing the game and streamlined the process.

 

@Lady_Alyria, I don't think that would be the case because a lot of people already know that in order to get the missions they want, they just have to get the mission list to reset. There's a difference between a legitimate time sink and a straight up nuisance. And if its that big of an issue, just add 10% more time on gathering missions (a 30 minute mission is now 33 minutes... about the time it takes to run back and forth to reset missions). Everybody wins

Edited May 31, 2012 by CaptMurphy

its a time sink **** block like 99% of all mmo reasoning,.

It seems like such a small change but it's one I'm hesitant to make. It would increase the amount of crafting materials to the point where they'd probably not cost more than the missions to go get them, if not less. And with so many mats people would have far more blue and purple recipes. Not sure if it would make crafting easier or worthless as a money making option.

 

Maybe they SHOULD be? I sort of figured that the intent for being able to run missions for mats was to put a CEILING on the price of mats. (an anti-gold farmer strategy, or something) If the prices rose above what you pay to get them from missions, crafters would just run the missions. (which, incidentally, is what I do, there really isn't much need to buy from the GTN for gathering mats)

 

Gatherers would gather and sell for less than mission cost. Crafters would buy from a gather at lower than mission cost. Both "profit" from the deal. (crafted goods would actually become profitable, even for blue low/midrange gear)

 

Mission goods would still have some value above cost to run mission, as A. rarity of rares, and B. People taking up slicing (or whatever) instead of their mission skill would have to buy their blue/purple mats.

Edited May 31, 2012 by GnatB

Maybe they SHOULD be? I sort of figured that the intent for being able to run missions for mats was to put a CEILING on the price of mats. (an anti-gold farmer strategy, or something) If the prices rose above what you pay to get them from missions, crafters would just run the missions. (which, incidentally, is what I do, there really isn't much need to buy from the GTN for gathering mats)

 

Gatherers would gather and sell for less than mission cost. Crafters would buy from a gather at lower than mission cost. Both "profit" from the deal. (crafted goods would actually become profitable, even for blue low/midrange gear)

 

Mission goods would still have some value above cost to run mission, as A. rarity of rares, and B. People taking up slicing (or whatever) instead of their mission skill would have to buy their blue/purple mats.

 

That's kind of how things were when we first started playing before people had much money. Mats sold on the GTN for less than it costs to run missions, and crafted gear sold at the suggested price that pops up when you post something on the GTN. The thing is that would mean 50s would have way more money as they'd no longer need to fund their alts gearing up, and crafters would make way less money. Easier obtaining of mats means more crafters, more competition and lower prices. Though at the moment mats are so hard to get that there is almost nothing for sale, so yeah, it needs some tweaking, but if they over do it and make mats too easy to get crafting will be completely worthless, not even a method of money making because everything you can sell would be going for chump change.

See, that's exactly what I'm talking about in my original post. If there is a known way around whatever reasoning for not putting all available gathering missions up, then why have them randomly generated in the first place? Its a needless waste of time. By the way, you don't have to log on and off for that to work, just go somewhere which needs to have a load screen (I.e. from your ship to a planet, or vice versa ).

 

The crew skills system is DESIGNED to waste people's time, I suspect all you're likely to do with this thread is get them to close the loophole of logging/zoning reseting the mission list.

The crew skills system is DESIGNED to waste people's time, I suspect all you're likely to do with this thread is get them to close the loophole of logging/zoning reseting the mission list.

 

Fair enough. But, if they close this loophole, then it should only be for the gathering skills because its an alternative (and yes, longer) form of farming. Completely understand that. The extra time sending crew members out is basically a convenience charge.

It should not be for the mission skills because there is no other way to gather items. If they want to make them longer to gather as aI tradeoff for having them all available, I can live with that.

Fair enough. But, if they close this loophole, then it should only be for the gathering skills because its an alternative (and yes, longer) form of farming. Completely understand that. The extra time sending crew members out is basically a convenience charge.

It should not be for the mission skills because there is no other way to gather items. If they want to make them longer to gather as aI tradeoff for having them all available, I can live with that.

 

There's only one reason, and it's not a good one, I can think of for them designing missions the way they did. And that's to make missions like drops.

 

That's the reason there is no real balance to the time/cost vs. reward for missions. For example, the time and cost of a moderate mission and it's reward, compared to a rich mission of the same type. They are in no way balanced, if they were a mission with 4x the reward would cost 4x as much, take 4x as long, or cost and take double the base mission, and that's not the case here a rich mission is inherently better than a moderate. So we're left with either the assumption that it's an insanely designed system, or we are being rewarded for our luck at getting the rich mission instead of the moderate one.

 

While I certainly don't think very highly of Bioware anymore, I prefer to think it's the latter and not the former.

 

And as a side note, the system would still "work" even for purely mission crew skills, it would just require you to do a mission you don't really want to do to have the chance of getting one you do want.

Edited May 31, 2012 by Zoiks

There's only one reason, and it's not a good one, I can think of for them designing missions the way they did. And that's to make missions like drops.

 

That's the reason there is no real balance to the time/cost vs. reward for missions. For example, the time and cost of a moderate mission and it's reward, compared to a rich mission of the same type. They are in no way balanced, if they were a mission with 4x the reward would cost 4x as much, take 4x as long, or cost and take double the base mission, and that's not the case here a rich mission is inherently better than a moderate. So we're left with either the assumption that it's an insanely designed system, or we are being rewarded for our luck at getting the rich mission instead of the moderate one.

 

While I certainly don't think very highly of Bioware anymore, I prefer to think it's the latter and not the former.

 

And as a side note, the system would still "work" even for purely mission crew skills, it would just require you to do a mission you don't really want to do to have the chance of getting one you do want.

 

I would argue the fact that it takes more skill to "unlock" the rich mission vs. the moderate mission is the balance. A higher skilled character gets significantly better returns for marginally more effort. Just like a lvl 50 gets better rewards from killing a lvl 49 mob than a lvl 2 gets killing a lvl 1 mob, even though the actual "effort" on the players part could be about the same.

 

Which is why I've always argued that the higher yield missions should sort of *replace* the lower yield ones. (though when somebody is out on the higher yield one, the lower yield one should be available to be run) realistically the lvl 50 char isn't going to be running around killing the lvl 1 mobs unless he's killed the lvl 49 ones.

Like the subject line asks. I find it frustrating when I want a particular gathering mission, say level x biochemical samples, and not see any available. So in order to bypass this ridiculous problem, I send all my crew members on said levels missions, leave the area (usually to my ship), quit the initial missions, THEN pick what I initially wanted. By no means is this a game breaking time sink, however imho its completely unnecessary and seems like an easy fix.

 

Perhaps not all displayed, but balanced and equally demonstrated would be nice. Also a seperate mission catagory for companion gifts would be nice. Currently they are overwhelming the lists at up to 3.25 to 1 against the other missions.

 

Clearly, if someone needs a crit item they will not run unnecessary crew mission after crew mission until it pops. They will log on and off until they get the one they actually need, which takes them out of the game an into working around the system.

 

It is a great basic system, but the implementation, the numbers are all screwed up. Not sure what happened with that.

My beef is that I usually have 4 light side missions and 1 dark side mission in diplomacy. That's annoying as hell for a dark side player.

My beef is that I usually have 4 light side missions and 1 dark side mission in diplomacy. That's annoying as hell for a dark side player.

 

That nonsense has to go. It's like having missions that grants socials points, and others that make you lose them.