Rework the 🐕💩 Missions

[Aokami Loid]

I know this is a topic everyone complains about, so I figured I'd address it while being bored after throwing away 4 daily missions since I don't have an effective way to train again until tomorrow. We really need an overhaul of the mission system for several reasons but the biggest one is that it actually punishes players for being active. There are a lot of ways to improve the missions so I'll give you a scale on what to do. I know it's super easy to want to take the lazy route and say missions are fine as they are, but let's take a little deep dive here.

Laziest Approach

We don't mind, as a developer or community, that players find it more efficient to drop a mission than to complete it because the reward is not worth it. This is why we are not going to change any aspect of missions and keep them the same for another couple of years. It is not a problem that often times people only log on to do their daily missions and then log off because there is no other efficient way to level once you hit level 35.

Less Lazy Approach

Some aspects of missions, like the rewards can be adjusted to provide better compensation for the risk of entering the danger zone. As it stands we as a company realize that one of the contributing factors behind the lack of activity in danger zones is due in part to missions that provide high risks to the player that yield little to no reward. While "EXP" originally was a good enough compensation for sometimes uncompletable missions, it has lead to people tossing missions away in favor for higher reward missions that require less effort. These high risk low reward missions include Bear Hunt and Clear the Abandon Lair which place you in the most active danger zones yet yield the almost identical rewards as Time Off! II a d-rank mission. We also understand that Clear the Abandon Lair II can sometimes be impossible to complete under a strict 24 hour clock due to two of the maps containing the monster being locked behind a 100 item required mission to access. However the slap in the face ultimately becomes the 19,000 exp you receive from finally killing 75 of them.

Desired Outcome

Removing the farming missions from all ranks above C will greatly respect the time of the player as, obviously, players will be farming the very shallow pool of monsters available to them when they are not doing their daily missions. Instead they will be replaced with different sets of missions that revolve around the main aspect of the game which is PVP. Instead of following the current formula we will instead focus on a system that will scale with the player's level. In this update we will be creating a new set of missions that revolve around player hunts, requiring you to kill a ninja of level 20, 30, 40 and so on. This can also be changed based on how many ninja in those level ranges that need to be killed. If you are level 29, you are more likely to get a mission requiring you to kill 2 or more level 20s. If you are level 32 you are more likely to need to kill someone who is level 30.

On top of these missions we will also add in village specific missions. These missions will require you to kill a member of a certain village or more commonly a mission to kill a rogue ninja or several. Not only will these new missions spread out the activity in the DZ it will also prevent map camping some of the highest traffic areas for low level players and disincentivizes the killing of players under the level 20.

While we are removing the hunting missions from the pool of daily missions, we will be religating these to one off NPC missions instead. A great example of this is Bear Hunt once again. With the Bear Hunt daily mission you must kill 50 brown bears to receive 22,500 exp and 150 ryo. However in Demon Claws, a one-off mission provided by the NPC Tomia you must kill 40 bears to receive 140,200 exp, 30 ryo as well as 5 blood pills. Since this is locked behind a level cap it is much easier to determine what is a desirable reward for that level as opposed to our previous method which was to hand out high stakes missions at large gaps of levels while still maintaining the rewards you should receive at the first level you can obtain it. This means that our missions will no longer punish higher level players for receiving a mission intended for a level 25 player to complete.

On top of all the previous changes we have made to the mission system, we will also include new daily missions that allow players to travel between villages to deliver items to NPCs. These missions might often take on unnecessary risks, however they will not be as heavily rewarding as killing missions. This option, while at first glance might not be worth the hassle, will instead reward a playstyle that isn't centralized on pvp. Instead it will reward cunning use of the transformation jutsu to move from map to map, or the camouflage jutsu to narrowly escape foes. We will also be introducing new, lower level missions with interactable objects in the world for a small amount of exp. This will help new players either find locations like the training grounds to pick up a student's family sword, or will allow them to interact with players in order to help them on the location of the mission. On top of the prior mentioned missions we will also have separate missions that require items such as canine fang, tiger fur, rat tails beetle shells and more.

 

Final thoughts

Since we will be increasing the amount of missions and effectively their reward we can better control what people receive for their levels as opposed to giving someone 19k exp when they need 300k to level up. By no means does this assume that someone should level up after doing their 4 daily missions, however I think this will overall have a more positive effect on players and meet their current needs.

[Konahri]

Sell your soul and a few $ to it and it might happen.
I'm kidding, they would change the missions as much they change the balance, no matter what players are ready to do for it.

No for real tho:
People already only do pvp missions by buying kills from alt accounts for ages now. This kind of change would just intensify it.

There is a reason why the missions and gameplay feels static & the issue is found in the core and ignorance lmao.