Away Missions - Common missions more cost effective than any others

Stitch626

I was looking closer at some of the Away Missions the other night and noticed that in regards to missions that have rewards such as gold, or arena crystals - I could do 2 "Common" missions and gain more overall rewards in less time than I would get if I did the same type of mission as "Uncommon". "Rare" missions seems to be all over the place, but for the most part, they seem to be even less cost effective than Uncommon or Common.

So, I guess my questions is....why? Why is it that the "common" missions give better overall rewards in less time than the higher tiered missions? Shouldn't it be the other way around?

Manthro

Perhaps it is because the rare/epic missions provide a huge number of points in alliance events compared to common/uncommon.

That might be the trade off, but I dunno.

Still, not having to log in every 15 minutes for a new mission is worth the slight drop in value for me.

Stitch626

Manthro wrote: »

Perhaps it is because the rare/epic missions provide a huge number of points in alliance events compared to common/uncommon.

That might be the trade off, but I dunno.

Still, not having to log in every 15 minutes for a new mission is worth the slight drop in value for me.

To be clear, its not really "slight" when you look at the values of Rare and higher missions.

For example, this morning I had an all gold "Common" quest that took 14min to complete, with 1096gold in rewards, and at a cost of 481gold to start. Meaning that in 14min, I netted 615 gold.

Just now I started a "Rare" all gold mission that has 4426gold in rewards, and costs 1943gold to start - and also will take 1hr50min to complete. Meaning that after I deduct the cost of the mission from the rewards, I will only be netting around 310gold/15min....so, about HALF the value, and you have to give up 3 decently ranked champs for nearly 2hrs to complete it...whereas I could do "Common" missions and net the same amount of gold in about 1hr, and I only have to give up 1 max rank 2 champ to complete it.

Ive just never seen such a backwards system that rewards players more for completing common things, than for doing things that take more time or resources.

CandKane

It's far more common in the mechanics for incremental/idle games to encourage active play over "idling" all the time. Most of the time, you start a long mission before bed, then a series of shorter missions throughout the day to maximize profit.

Stitch626

I mean, I get it. It just seems backwards in my opinion.

Longer missions that cost more and use more of your resources should reward you better than a quick mission you can do in 15min.

Maybe years of shopping at Costco has skewed my view on valuing these things, but I see the Uncommon/Rare missions as being the "bulk" deal, and, at least in my opinion, they should dish out rewards that are AT LEAST on par with the rewards you would get from the Common missions -- but certainly they should not be worse. It just seems silly and backwards to me.

Uncommon+ missions force you to use more bots, more resources, and takes more time to complete. Thus they should reward you better. This would be like if you got 1,000 exp per bot KO on Act 1 Map 1, but you only got 500exp per KO on Act 3 Map 6.

Terminal

The benefit is it's more resources than you'd otherwise get. If you have 4x15 min missions that's only 1hr and you have 1hr of dead time waiting for new missions. You can never do 8x15 in a 2 hour block. So these cost per minute calculations are all wrong.

They also give more points for events.

It's also about not everyone can/wants to log in every 15 mins.

Stitch626

Right - so after completing the Common missions, if you want to keep doing more missions, you will end up paying more, for less. Thats my point. This whole "not everyone wants to log in every 15min" or "the higher ranked missions are worth more points" is completely irrelevant to the overall point.

The cost per minute calculations are correct. Just because you cant do 8 missions per reset does not change how much you are earning in a period of time with the missions. You earn more resources in the 15min Common missions than you do in the higher tiered Uncommon/Rare missions. Time is money.

Sure - before I go to bed, or if I know I wont be playing the game for a bit, ill do a Rare/Uncommon/Epic mission. But should that really be the only reason for wanting to do those missions? IMO, we need more missions offered per cycle (which would make people have to choose which missions to do, and which to skip), and the rewards need to be readjusted due to the difficulty of the mission.

But, apparently, im the only one who thinks this whole system is backwards, so, oh well. Im just saying, ive played MMORPGs for 15+years, as well as MCOC, and several other online phone/tablet games, and I have never seen a system that rewards you more for doing basic quests, vs. higher tiered ones.

Terminal

The system used to be a 4hr reset window with double the number of missions. Gold missions did not exist. Things made more sense. There was an overwhelmingly negative response on the forums, they said they'd do something about it, but nothing has changed yet.

Having 3-4 hour missions where you can't see what's coming up and potentially miss out on something good is a flawed system.

However, you'll rarely get all 4 of the same resource type, so whatever your desired resource, you still get more of it than not with this system, the 'cost per minute' is lower but you're still getting more, so straight cost per minute calculations are flawed. In a 24hr period you can only 'work' for 12 hours on 15 min missions, and 30 min uncommon missions are not as bad as half, they are fairly close.

I agree that if you're awake, 2-4h missions don't make much sense, because you can miss out on what's coming in the next refresh because lower missions have better rewards. I only use them when it's my desired resource and no smaller options for that resource exist.

0mega_Supreme

Some rare and epic missions are not available in common or uncommon form. Like those offering crystal shards or spark essence.