Contracts req. too high! (aka missions)

(binderr) #1

Hey, I’ve just returned to this game after two months and after playing few hours, I managed to complete 2/3 contracts. 3rd contract was for 20k objective xp, which was taking forever!!

So I re-rolled, and what do I get…again, see below.

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I re-rolled again thinking I might get moderate contracts and what I get again… (lol)
36k combat xp seriously.

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I flipped and re-rolled again with 60 rads…

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…and what I see it pretty much a repetitive of previous high xp requirement missions. I don’t understand why DB has done this, do they really want players to now grind for hours to complete a mission.

Most missions before this change were not too easy nor too difficult to complete, with combat xp taking the longest to complete most times. No more first game or first win rewards, fine take them away but don’t make it this difficult to complete missions, it only frustrates players and I’ve been playing for two years, I wonder how new gamers feel?

They’ve really ramped up the missions/contracts and now DB want us to grind for longer for same reward we used to earn in shorter games.

What do you guys think of the new contracts (aka missions)?

The Biggest Issue with Progression and Player Retention (Long)
(hawkeyeguy99) #2

I haven’t been able to log in since the update but I agree with everything you say here. SD’s goal is to get people playing longer but i hate the change. I liked being able to just log in for about an hour and get a good reward for my time. Now I’ll have to grind for 3+ hours for the same rewards and the only difference is the in-game credit rate is increased marginally. It’s a terrible change that’s supposed to “increase credit earn rates”. I don’t understand how making the grind for the same reward LONGER is supposed to increase our credit earn rates.

(bgyoshi) #3

Maybe it’s just me but the old missions would take me 1 or 2 games of objective to complete. If I had a bad round then it MIGHT take 3 but pretty much all of them were done in the first game.

I usually play for about 2 hours so it’s nice to see some contracts that might actually take me 7 or 8 objective rounds to finish.

(Press E) #4

I never really bothered with missions much anyways, but this still annoys me. In order to complete a specific XP mission, I usually have to play a very spacific merc class, which sucks if you don’t like any of the engis like me or aren’t MLG pro in combat. It’s not so bad if it only takes 1 or 2 matches to grt that XP, but 36k combat XP? No thanks, no way in hell I’m playing assault for 3+ hours straight.

What annoys me more is that you can’t reroll specific missions, you have to reroll all of them.

I get wanting to make missions take longer to keep people in game, but whoever thought 36,000 combat XP was a good idea can leave. Casual players who can’t or simply don’t want to grind 3 hours at a time should not be punished with this. If SD really wants to keep players in game longer, they should be giving them more things to do, like unique gamemodes and maps. Takes more effort, but it’s worth it.

(binderr) #5

That’s exactly what I thought when I was stuck on the third mission, if only I could just reroll that last mission. Even the one hour play for 1000 credits was pain.

Here’s something funny, if…
18k combat xp =900 credits, how does…
36k combat xp=1000 credits only.

18k extra grind for 100 credit more!! how?who did the math!!?

(Press E) #6

Probably the same person who made it cost 45 weapon kits back when those were a thing for a 1 in 3 chance to get the cobalt loadout you want, then made weapon kits only obtainable in arsenal crates.

(Jigstraw) #7

What they’re doing is taking emphasis off of contracts as the player’s primary source of credits in favor of getting a more reasonable amount of credits by simply playing period, with the contracts as a bonus. I don’t think you’re meant to actively try to complete them in the most efficient way possible. But that being said, when I DO complete a set of contracts, I no longer have any incentive to play. Honestly it feels like my average playtime is going to decrease doing 2 sets of contracts a day, opposed to doing multiple sets of missions spread out across the day. The only exception would be getting a “play for 120 minutes” contract in both sets.

I feel like if I’m right about the reasoning behind these changes, they should just revert the credit booster bonus from 50% back to 100%. I don’t think lowering it was necessary considering the extreme deficit of credits between the old mission system and the new contract system. That, or they should alter the system so that credit boosters affect ALL sources of credits, including the base credit earnrate of 19/minute, the contract payouts, the contract set completed bonus, and the performance based bonus credit payouts. That would feel a lot more fair.

In any case, saying “We want players to play longer” and then contradicting it by saying “when you consider all the changes, players SHOULD, on average, be earning the same amount that they were before” is stupid. You can’t have it both ways, splash damage. Pick one. If you have to play longer to earn the same amount, then what you’ve done is LOWER the overall earnrate.

(DB Genome editor) #8

I have to say this new system adds no motivation whatsoever for me. With the old missions I often played for an hour or so to clear a set of missions, take a break for a few hours and come back for another round (rinse, repeat). Now the XP targets are so high and the payoffs so ridiculous in comparison (36K combat XP for 1000 cr vs 10K XP in the past?!?) I can’t imagine completing them in a single sitting, nor do I feel like the effort is worth the reward.

In the past I’d often look at what I had left to complete and think “one more match and I should be able to complete that mission, let’s do it now so I get a full new set with the refresh.” So I’d play one more match, sometimes two if the first one didn’t go as planned, to clear that mission board.

Now after a match I’ve barely made a dent in the progress, the end is nowhere in sight, and so I might still continue to play because I feel like it, but rarely will that nearly finished mission be the motivating factor taunting me to go just one more match…

(Mc1412013) #9

2 days and still couldnt complete the medic requirements every one going medic trying to get xp i put my aura station down in perfect spot and some asshole puts theres next to mine.only time i get decent xp is ff on servers that i can kill the theives station

(Jigstraw) #10

try playing vassili instead and putting your heartbeat sensors out of bounds or on top of things or underneath things. spotting exp is broken af right now, may as well take advantage of it. I recorded a match where I got 10k support exp as vassili in a single game of objective mode, on attack.

(HadronZodiac) #11

Tbh i think they are MOSTLY ok, 20k exp isnt hard to do (basically 2 matches). Yeah 36k combat exp is a lot tho, maybe make it 28, and make the objective one 16k

(Teflon Love) #12

I played 3 matches tonight, with the first two being an unplayable mess and the 3rd being ok-ish (not withstanding the 2 bottom scoring Phantoms on our team that eventually left).
After that I had a 6000 support XP contract finished and the remaining 2 contracts at about 15%. As I did not have any fun in the first place I just quit and played something else.

For all I care SD can just remove the contracts. It’s currently a high effort low reward concept. Maybe change them to even higher effort but also higher reward contracts that might take you a couple of days to complete but then give you around 5000 credits.

In any case I don’t see how contracts could keep me playing more. A fun game could, even without contracts. Hopefully rental servers enable admins to undo most of the game play blunders of the past months with proper configuration.

(binderr) #13

Aura is still one of the best XP farmers but trying to earn 10-15k is hard enough now let alone 20-30k. She’s been needed to oblivion. You have to play pretty smart to make that kind XP we used to in 20-30min stopwatch games. Those days are long gone!

(binderr) #14

Yes, that’s what they’ve done, we’re earnings far less credit than before while playing more games.
Playing more games or even longer isn’t bad but where is the consistency in credits we earn.

(Mc1412013) #15

I tried that but after a while people cry and throw fits im not helping the team as a sniper even though im.the reason they know there running underground and head them.off at the end of the tunnel.

(DarkangelUK) #16

I get the idea behind the change, they want more people playing for longer rather than in short bursts which makes sense, however the problem is that DB is a mentally exhausting game, playing for long periods can really take its toll. It’s not just the hectic gameplay, its the occasional screwed teams that you need to suffer through or lose the xp/playtime, shotguns being shotguns, recons, fresh skybabies, toxic mutant reee screamers. The player experience needs to be fixed and more enjoyable to make people WANT to play for longer before actually pushing them into doing it.

(Eox) #17

Agreed. If SD want people to stick around longer, they should consider dealing with as much causes of player frustration as possible. Sometimes, it’s REALLY hard to enjoy DB at all despite all its perks.

#18

Am I just being incredible lucky or were game mode xp missions/contracts removed? The ones that have the usual game mode icon on them seem to be earn x amount of overall xp.

On that topic I wish the devs were to release balance patches more frequently, like it was back in 2015 with the fine tuning updates. They went live every two weeks and although the changes weren’t dramatic they allowed to try out new things as opposed to now, where the patches are far apart from each other and also only occur rarely.

(shirosae) #19

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(Begin2018) #20

This update is really sh*ty. Annoying contracts, levels hidden, still min lvl 10 servers (then old min lvl 2 or 3). Nothing is good, everything is trash.