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Revamp the Jobs


Mylex

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Since it is first come, first serve, the job terminals are/will become a point of contention. This will only get worse as more people start playing (recruit!!)

A few ideas:
- A cost per job set by the faction offering it. Let's face it, credits are almost useless at the higher levels so lets make a use for them.

- Making faction work for something else - you can only choose jobs offered by factions for are at peace with. Factions you are at war with must acquired through missions offered by faction NPCs (and a faction bonus for completing them)

- Unions? - [u]Privateer[/u] had a system where there were common jobs for everyone and then there were higher paying jobs if you joined a union - warriors, traders, ect. This could help by subdividing selections.

- Penalty for forfiting a job mission. No one can just fill there list and cherry pick at the terminal.

- Jobs that require fufilling or killing things that are already in-game (i.e. kill 20 L5 chavez, deliver 20 crates of jenquai tech somewhere...)

Death to Zayons! Edited by Mylex
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Penalties for forfeiting jobs, might be pretty interesting, say a small faction penalty comparable to the increase you'd get for completing the job. Would have to resolve all issues, if they haven't already, for jobs that send you to closed sectors. Trade jobs would be a problem here, because you don't know your final destination when you take the job.
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jobs is one area that will receive some lovin' fairly soon (honest guv). In code development terms the things we're looking at now are AI overhaul, stat/buff handling upgrades, raid system upgrades & GM/Dev comms&control upgrades.
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[quote name='Mylex' timestamp='1312206965' post='43846']
Since it is first come, first serve, the job terminals are/will become a point of contention. This will only get worse as more people start playing (recruit!!)

A few ideas:
- A cost per job set by the faction offering it. Let's face it, credits are almost useless at the higher levels so lets make a use for them.

- Making faction work for something else - you can only choose jobs offered by factions for are at peace with. Factions you are at war with must acquired through missions offered by faction NPCs (and a faction bonus for completing them)

- Unions? - [u]Privateer[/u] had a system where there were common jobs for everyone and then there were higher paying jobs if you joined a union - warriors, traders, ect. This could help by subdividing selections.

- Penalty for forfiting a job mission. No one can just fill there list and cherry pick at the terminal.

- Jobs that require fufilling or killing things that are already in-game (i.e. kill 20 L5 chavez, deliver 20 crates of jenquai tech somewhere...)

Death to Zayons!
[/quote]

maybe missunderstood you but.."pay for jobs"? Um its a job..they are suppost to pay YOU. In live it not only awarded faction to you for the job...but actually awarded CREDITS. Think here...you work for your boss..he PAYS you for doing the work..and if you are a reliable employee he gets to liking you (faction).

Even in live there weren't that many npc driven jobs for faction, and those that were..very few were repeatable, THATS why they added a faction increase to jobs...so why would you have a faction check to do the job..so you can get the faction you are seeking, thats just circular logic.

I can see a better rewarding job system when faction is gained..thats a good idea imo..just not through the terminal system I think, would be better in a repeatable via npc. That ways you wouldn't have to have data resources devoted to offering higher tier jobs via terminals, when nobody there to take them..it would sort of be a "on demand" system from npc.

Penalty for forfeit..in concept yes good. Would have to not penalize for not completables, like to closed sectors etc. though. The forfeiters are actually job ninjas snatching all available jobs..then tossing nondesirable ones, if like live all they could do is take 2 then have to wait 2 min until taking 2 more and the respawn was 4-5 min. they would have to be more selective, letting others have a chance at jobs, they would actually have to READ the contracted job BEFORE they TOOK the job :)

Don't know if the killing things already in game to meet requirements of jobs would work or not, coders got to figure that one out, but I would imagine that also would work better on a npc based system and on demand. Even now some jobs via terminals despawn if you get logged off etc., jobs that require killing x amount of things etc. could get reset that way, I don't know about you, but it would peeve me to kill 19 of something from a terminal, and get DCed and have to start killing all over to get to 20. Many of the npc tasks don't reset the same way so get DCed at 19..relog you are still at 19.
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Best possible penalty for forfeiting jobs, imho, is a 60 minute cooldown on that job slot.

Forfeit one job.. can only take 5 for the next hour. Forfeit 3 jobs, can only take 3 for the next hour.

Also, have each job slot individually timed.
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[quote name='Yuritau' timestamp='1312356609' post='43914']
Best possible penalty for forfeiting jobs, imho, is a 60 minute cooldown on that job slot.

Forfeit one job.. can only take 5 for the next hour. Forfeit 3 jobs, can only take 3 for the next hour.

Also, have each job slot individually timed.
[/quote]
Or just lock jobs so you have to wait an hour before you can forfeit a job... Or really only a quarter of an hour would be enough to make taking jobs at random non-beneficial.
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[quote name='Mattsacre' timestamp='1312268173' post='43886']
maybe missunderstood you but.."pay for jobs"? Um its a job..they are suppost to pay YOU. In live it not only awarded faction to you for the job...but actually awarded CREDITS. Think here...you work for your boss..he PAYS you for doing the work..and if you are a reliable employee he gets to liking you (faction).[/quote]

Actually, you get paid in experience and faction, not in credits.
The concept is to have the player make an investment to get exp.
How about if you had to pay a price scale for low to high experience jobs? You could mix it up a bit. This would also help prevent job droning for days on end and force you to go make more money doing something else.
Also, instead of managing jobs by level, higher experience jobs would have higher level mobs or tasks to complete so all jobs could be displayed at the terminals.
Cost would prevent some ninja action as the investment would become a deterent. Also, If you bought a high job and couldn't complete it, you would forefit your credits too.

Because you would be paying, the devs could raise the job cap too

As for the faction point, you're right. I think any negative impact to faction at the job terminals would be detrimental to gameplay.

This is just a rough idea and I appreciate the feedback ;)
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[color="#444444"][font="Tahoma, Verdana, Arial,"][color="#606060"][size="2"]"Posted by Yuritau 03 August 2011 - 03:30 AM[/size][/color]

Best possible penalty for forfeiting jobs, imho, is a 60 minute cooldown on that job slot.

Forfeit one job.. can only take 5 for the next hour. Forfeit 3 jobs, can only take 3 for the next hour.

Also, have each job slot individually timed."

The problem with this is that if you take 6 jobs, then crash to desktop at the first gate you come to, you're stuck waiting for the cooldown before you can take more jobs. Plus I have found that taking a full complement of jobs seems to be the best way of getting the game to crash. I can play all day, swapping toons willy-nilly with no problem but take 6 jobs and try to gate... BOOM, hello desktop. Maybe that's just my experience, but the result is the same.[/font][/color] Edited by ryprx
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[quote name='ryprx' timestamp='1312816377' post='44306']
The problem with this is that if you take 6 jobs, then crash to desktop at the first gate you come to, you're stuck waiting for the cooldown before you can take more jobs. Plus I have found that taking a full complement of jobs seems to be the best way of getting the game to crash. I can play all day, swapping toons willy-nilly with no problem but take 6 jobs and try to gate... BOOM, hello desktop. Maybe that's just my experience, but the result is the same.[/font][/color]
[/quote]

Jobs getting removed from your quest list when logging out or crashing is an issue right now, true, but AFAIK that's a bug that should get fixed eventually, since that's definitely not how it worked in Live.
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[quote name='Zyg' timestamp='1312815586' post='44305']
Actually, you get paid in experience and faction, not in credits.
The concept is to have the player make an investment to get exp.
How about if you had to pay a price scale for low to high experience jobs? You could mix it up a bit. This would also help prevent job droning for days on end and force you to go make more money doing something else.
Also, instead of managing jobs by level, higher experience jobs would have higher level mobs or tasks to complete so all jobs could be displayed at the terminals.
Cost would prevent some ninja action as the investment would become a deterent. Also, If you bought a high job and couldn't complete it, you would forefit your credits too.

Because you would be paying, the devs could raise the job cap too

As for the faction point, you're right. I think any negative impact to faction at the job terminals would be detrimental to gameplay.

This is just a rough idea and I appreciate the feedback <_<
[/quote]

LOL then we are going to have to change the name from "job terminal" to "apprenticeship terminal" or "journeyman terminal" or even "unpaid person assistant terminal"

Actually why the hesitance to get paid for a job? It was never very much even for 135 jobs, if memory serves me right it was 6kish ea job, 6k x 6 jobs (live it was max 5 jobs btw) 36k credits per run, you make way more per hour running pluto>earth runs or even fenris>somerland runs than that per hour. Yes combat job mobs drop vendorable loot, but really most instances it barely covers ammo costs for ammo users. Really and truely job terminals don't need to be a credit sink, many other ways to suck up credits can be instituted if the economy seems inbalanced.

If you need to find ways to sink credits: The OCD event cost at a minimum 30m credits just to manufacture the device, thats not counting any failed anny on recipe learning etc, nor the equipment repair/rebuilt costs when the event crushed you or guildies.

RD base raid, the repair bill from that was big..and the instant frag to rep. made you have to work for hrs. to repair it with mass slaughter of chavez.

Need I say anything about Fish bowl? KK..feather..you had to have a semi-rare drop item feather to even make the lure to start the raid, you had to frag thousands of RD to get said feather, and the subsequent slaughter of chavez to reset rep.

Really and truely credits in this game are just E-Peen. Something that hollow souls gather to hoard and brag about. Credits like RL are to be used and enjoyed, to be shared and help others, or even secure you and your loved ones future.

Credit expenditure shouldn't be a criteria for access to factional jobs, if, and thats IF, there needs to be higher tier faction jobs,then that should be dependant on the sweat invested in lower tier jobs, if there needs to be a "investment" in faction or xp then "time" is the only TRUE expenditure.

Your point about job droning...so they would need credits for the "investment", if they are a job droner..how are they going to get the credits to invest? CAMP. Another type of droning, they will haunt a high spawn spot (most often mobs mission workers will need) and kill..kill..and kill endlessly! POing other players with KSing etc.

I like your idea for increased factional/xp jobs as you get deeper into a faction, this will actually incourage folks to "invest" more into a faction than just stay yellow, esp. if there are big xp gains for completion of heavy faction dependent tasks. There was a few missions live that had huge xp gains (and subsequent faction shifts) and some were even repeatable, like the one for the V'rix were you sacraficed glenn tourists, or the ones for progen were you betrayed either PW or PS class leader and aligned. There was the jenquai ones were you parted with JD and JE and alighned with mordana, those missions had high xp for them, but hit faction as well.
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This is all suggestion and don't know if it could even be done and has nothing to do with how live was. That being said..

As far as jobs go, one system that works well is the "job" system used in Uncharted Waters Online (UWO), which by the way is a game very similar to EnB but starts out set in the 15th Century and progresses forward in time. Regardless, everything needed for it is already in game, minus the code.

How this works is, In UWO there are NPC's called "Mediators" in certain cities, located in the guild buildings. Guilds are not player groups, but rather how the Classes are designated. (Guilds in UWO are called Companies)

Comparing UWO to EnB:
EnB

Job Terminals
Job Type - Combat, Trade, Explore
Jobs that can be taken - 6
Refresh - Time based
Rewards - XP type/faction/possible loot (combat)

UWO

Guild Mediator
Guild Type - Adventure, Trade, Maritime
Jobs that can be taken - 1
Refresh - Leave city + travel or QMP
Rewards - "credits"/fame, sometimes items depending on the"job"/difficulty/mob/mob item drop. In particular for items, QMP's.

Adventure = Explore
Trade = Trade
Maritime = Combat

Mediator = Job Terminal
Guild GM = Any NPC you could turn a mission in to for completion and/or receive an item reward

So, the Adventure Guild Mediator offers, you guessed it, Adventure "request's" (Jobs). Trade offers trade jobs, Maritime offers "combat" jobs. These are all eliminated due to the fact that job terminal's already offer all three.

In UWO you are only allowed one job at a time. There are a few ways to refresh jobs that are offered, which can be anywhere from 1 to 10. They are either through leaving the city and traveling to another, leaving the city and traveling out of site then returning or through what is called, QMP's (Quest Mediation Permits). QMP's are stackable item rewards given after completion of certain request's. Other request's reward items, credits, etc.

How QMP's work is by clicking them near the Mediator (Job terminal). That's it. After that you can re-target the Mediator and he will have a new set of jobs available. Now,.... the jobs offered vary in difficulty which range from 1 star to 10 star. One star being easy, ten being extremely difficult and almost always require a group. In fact, most jobs over 6 stars require groups at lower to mid levels, which would be a great way to get EnB players together and offer something not in game as we know it. Group jobs.

Another thing about QMP's is that they are highly sought after, making them valuable (usually around 150k each). It's not unheard of to burn through 40+ to get a particular job to spawn. Some jobs are extremely rare and don't spawn very often. Reason being is that usually the most rare jobs reward Job Permits. This is something that is not part of EnB. Jobs in UWO actually define the Classes by the skills that are associated with that job type. Without getting into all of it, an example would be the Shipwright Job. Expert skill is shipbuilding which gives +1 to shipbuilding. There are favored skills which give a bonus, and normal skills. I'll leave it at that.

The big difference of the two games are how the jobs are presented. In EnB, all players can see what's available. In UWO, it's per individual. However, jobs can be shared by the group leader and require that the person to be shared with be present in order for it to be shared. The job to be shared will then show up in the first "slot" for all group members to see and accept with a maximum of 5 shares. This would equal a full group and eliminates the possibility to continually share a rare job. Also, members of the group that have accepted a shared job can not share it again. This leads to rare jobs being a money maker of sort's. I've seen some of the semi-rare jobs being offered at 10M per slot. That's actually a lot just to join a group, but well worth it if your looking for a particular job permit and don't have the fame or skill level required. The thing about that is, unless you meet the requirements, you can't complete it even if you've accepted it. Which means, no more requests can be taken until you complete it or you abandon it. Guess it all depends on the reward in relation to your advancement and fun value.

Another thing that some jobs require is a certain level of fame. This is the equivalent of faction in EnB. So, not only are some jobs extremely rare, they also require fame to even show up, making them much more difficult to obtain.

Ok, now, this may be repeating a lot of what I said already, but I want to put it totally in EnB terms.

Build terminals have a slot to input control items, which I know do not presently work. Include a slot at the job terminal for a similar item that is a reward from certain jobs that allows a player the choice to reset the jobs being offered. Otherwise, travel or time is needed to refresh the jobs offered.

Jobs are already separated not only by location, but also level requirement. Add difficulty per level giving a more diverse selection and composition of group make up. Combat would be easy and obvious. Some you can take solo, some you can't.

Trade jobs for groups could require the delivery/transport of more items/NPC's then you have inventory for, requiring more then one person in the group and a time limit to eliminate multiple trips on one toon. More difficult solo-able missions could have a time limit that requires a certain warp speed to complete. Tie in faction to these as well e.g. Red Dragon for a short cut through BBW.

Explore jobs would follow the same lines as trade, but obviously explore jobs. Possibly add in for groups the exploration of certain points in multiple sectors. Combat job mobs spawn when the job has been accepted. Would it be possible to spawn "hidden" nav points for group explore jobs? Or spawn mobs, like the satallites in AP, that wander in a general vicinity and you have to find them. When found they could give information leading to the next objective until completion.

Item rewards would provide more incentive to do jobs. In the case of an item that refreshes what jobs are available, that would boost the economy. Varied degree of difficulty in missions that don't spawn very often would create a demand for these items. An over exaggerated example would be something like, you have 100 Job Request Form v.2's. It might take 5,000 forms to get the job your looking for to spawn, or if lucky, it might take 50. If you run out, there will be a demand. You either take lower level jobs that reward these forms, or you buy them from players. Either way it works out.

As I see it, nothing graphically would need to be added which isn't already in game. Other then a slot at the job terminal. Obviously NPC's can be added. Whether or not they can be used to turn in missions for rewards from jobs taken at a terminals, I don't know. Job terminals are already there. Questions concerning them would include, Can a slot be added, like what is on the Manufacturing terminal, allowing a player to refresh what jobs are available with an item? Can code be written or changed to provide a per individual choice of jobs? If so, Can jobs be made sharable for groups?

Another thing not mentioned about jobs in UWO is, some of them give an advance reward. Upon forfeiting you lose the job and any credits/items that were given in advance. To prevent item farming of advanced item rewards, make them non-manu and non-trade-able.

About difficulty per level. An example would be the jobs currently in game. They could be the equivalent of a 1 star job. An example of a level 50 group Trade job that is 10 stars could be something like:

Requires: Engine Tech 3, Shield Tech 3
Job Location: Net-7

Pick up 100 (non-stackable) <item> from <location> in <sector> and deliver them to <station> in <sector> no later then <time limit>.

The pick-up location could be a place like VT in an area that lower levels would have a difficult time with, like a radiation zone that requires a certain level of shield and higher level mobs. Drop off could be Antares for completion and then turn in back at n7 for whatever the reward is.

The possibilities are endless.

I know I'm missing some details, but the basics are all here.
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  • 2 weeks later...
Some great ideas - I love the idea of group jobs, although I do have to think that this could be another way multiboxers gain an (unfair?) advantage.

I think a mix of rewards - credits or xp would be appropriate. Once the economy is balanced, it could be that folks run jobs to make a bit of money for manufacturing or what have you.
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