Current State Of Job Terminals While Leveling

[Harros]

I started this discussion with (I think) Stanig the other night and wanted to post a topic to continue it. As most people know, it took me around 5 days to reach 150 on my Explorer. Jobs are 90% responsible for the speed at which this happened. I wanted to start this thread to get the community's opinion on the effect of jobs regarding leveling.

I'm going to start with how explore jobs in general work. Depending on the level of jobs you are running, you are required to travel X many jumps starting with one and adding 1-2 for each tier of job up from 50. While on paper this appears to be an appropriate form of scaling, this causes issues on two fronts. The first is wormholes. My goal for leveling was looking for jobs to abuse the wormhole system and cut these jumps down to a minimum at higher level jobs. The second issue is small systems. Having to run jobs which require warping through Grissom are a terrible choice compared to those which need you to travel the 30 KM through Legarto. Even through the difference for warping is around 300 KM, both count as the same number of jumps when generating jobs.

Here was my general strategy for reaching 150. For 1-50, I did a combination of a few things: I ran a couple tours to new zones to get explore above 20; killed Scuttles in Saturn until I was no longer receiving experience around CL14; and trading the loot to an alt for TL15. I then ran explore jobs out of Net-7 to Jupiter. Uranus involves much less warping but for a JE, the WH to Jupiter makes this the better option as you start dropping satellites at the farthest moons and working your way towards the Saturn gate again. This process required around 500-600 KM of warping. The next stage was 75 jobs. The reason why VT is the best option for this is again the jumps. If you look at the map, you only have one direction to go for VT. All 75 explore jobs will go to Muspelhein. Anywhere else you can run jobs from can go multiple directions leading situations where you need to wait for multiple jump refreshes or traveling opposite directions. VT also had the advantage of having a weft right outside the station. These jobs required around 400-500 KM of warping and then a quick wormhole back to VT. I ran these until I was explore level 45.

The next spot for running jobs is a wonderful secret for JE's. Endriago (which is 4 jump jobs) is an unbelievable mid-level job spot. Even through I had to run VT jobs for a few levels past 90, it was worth it. Endriago has two locations it can go but both are worth taking so you can decide which jobs to take after the job list is finished generating. You can either go to Aragoth Prime or Jotunheim. Aragoth Prime is obviously the superior spot as the VT wormhole gives easy access. However, even though Jotunheim is 4 jumps out, look at the systems you need to travel through. Endriago is a tiny system requiring around 60 KM to get to the gate. You then travel 30 KM through Legarto followed by 60 KM through Odin's Belt. Odin Rex is the largest warp which is around 200 KM, about equal to warping through Aragoth Prime. You then travel another 60 KM to Jotunheim to drop your missions off and wormhole back to Endriago. The distance traveled is only slightly more than the distance of VT plus Aragoth Prime.

The final job location which is in my opinion the largest issue when is comes to leveling is OMP. Not only do you have a weft in system with the station again, 2 of the 3 job choices go to systems with wefts as well. Each job is worth 10,000 experience. They require you to travel to Cooper (ignore these), VT or Legarto. Even if you need to take a combination of VT and Legarto, the farthest total you will need to warp is 200 KM which INCLUDES the distance from the Carpenter weft back to OMP. Running all 6 jobs takes 2 minutes to run if they are in the same system for 4 minutes if you need to go to both locations. Assuming on every trip you need to visit both locations, this is 900,000 experience per hour! The last number I heard for 49 to 50 is that it requires 800,000 experience. I can say for certain that before 45, it only took 4-6 trips at most to level. Before 40, it was around 3 trips. I'm convinced this is most experience that can be obtained from any activity in the game at any level. People always talk about how great killing 55+ BBW drones in a group is for leveling combat. However, doing these jobs are a night and day experience for speed while leveling. Once I hit explore and trade 50, I leveled combat off the rollover experience from continuing to run jobs. I went from 120 to 135 in two hours. It's not even worth considering 150 Xipe jobs with the number of systems required for you to travel through.

The biggest change that needs to be made is OMP. Right now this station is too powerful for players with access to wormholes. The location of jobs also need to be reviewed. From my experience, the higher level jobs I was running, the [b]LESS [/b]distance I was needing to travel to complete them. Level 50 jobs in Net-7 required warping the most even through it was the least amount of jumps. However, a balance needs to be struck with players that would be running jobs without wormholes.

The balance to this is players obtain no money while running them. I had 200,000 in my wallet at hitting 150 from those scuttles I killed before 50. My reputation on the other had (which some would consider priceless) was at least 8000+ with all player factions including Progen Warriors which start at a large negative with Explorers. Even my Glenn faction was at 6800 when hitting 150. Terran Alliance and Progen Combine were at 5800.

As a community, we need to decide what an appropriate level of experience per hour is. Is it right for a player to go from combat level 49 to 50 doing explore jobs in under an hour? What should the role of jobs be while leveling and do we need a better system for supplementing explore and trade experience?

[Stanig[IS]]

Both OMP and Friendship 7 are terrible for this, they both use the same job pool and are either in a sector with a weft or are within 1 jump of one.

[Terrell [BT]]

I don't agree with this. What players without wormhole should do, is group with a JE while doing jobs. I don't think there was anything wrong with the Aragoth Station round trip trade jobs in 2002-2004 that went to DCO, Dauntless, and N7 all of which were within one gate of a weft with the station also being next to a weft. Same for N7 to Aragoth Station trade jobs, both one way & round trip. Also if a JW is doing jobs past CL45, for whatever reason, he can always use Return friend to go back to the base he started after he drops his satellites. Those skills are there to benefit classes, such as the JE, I don't see why they should be forbidden to use them, especially when we're talking about the Explorer doing Explore jobs.

[Harros]

One major difference with jobs between now and live was the limit of two jobs every 6 minutes. Currently, you can take 6 jobs whenever you want. I'm not saying we should disallow wormhole, summon or self destruct. However, we should decide what is an acceptable rate of experience per hour given all rewards to bring them in line with other activities for leveling. We should also take into consideration if there are any plans to add credits back to running jobs.

I would also like to see a change so that wormhole adds an advantage but isn't a complete powerhouse as it is now. Even with wormhole, level 135 jobs should still take longer to complete than level 50 jobs. Edited November 25, 2012 by Harros