Declined A way to fix the missions for matchmaking system

[Maf 32,324]

OK, first of all - this is not an idea to add missions back to PRO battles. Apologies to anyone expecting that :P

 

I'm sure most of you noticed how the missions button wasn't available in battles during the testing of the matchmaking system. Many players pointed out that this was really annoying, and so did I. Developers explained that the reason they did this is because they want players to stay till the end of the battle, instead of completing a mission and leaving, so that's why they removed the missions button so that players can't keep track of mission progress. Well, I propose a better solution.

 

 

1. Keep the missions button where it is.

 

In the V-log they said that they don't want players checking missions instead of playing., so they removed the missions button from the in-game interface. But let's be real here - what does it take to check missions? 5 seconds during respawn? I don't think it's a distraction from gameplay. If it is, then they might as well remove all the other buttons (like friends, the shop, settings, etc.) from the in-game interface to reduce distraction.

 

Another reason why the icon was removed was to prevent confusion from being in a custom battle and seeing mission progress, despite them being possible to complete. So if that's the case, then why not make the button disappear or become gray or crossed out as soon as you go to the custom battles list?

 

2. Make missions only count if the player stays until the end of the battle.

 

I know players will hate devs for this, but I think this is necessary. Developers want players to stay until the end of a battle, so this will provide more incentive for that. The crystal reward from the fund already works like that - you have to stay till the end to collect it. So why not do the same with missions? Yes, you will have to play a battle from start to finish to complete a mission, but at least battles are only 10 minutes long, so it won't take much time. Besides, I will make up for this suggestion with the following points :)

 

 

3. Reduce mission requirements.

 

To make it easier to complete each mission in just one or two battles, reduce the effort required to complete a mission (preferably without reducing the reward). Something like a 10-25% reduction would make sense.

 

 

4. Complete a mission for crystals.

 

If 3 isn't possible for economic balance reasons, there should be a new feature added to the missions system that allows you to complete a mission for crystals. The way this works is that missions become like Micro-upgrades. In the beginning you can "insta-complete" it for double the amount of the reward. So yeah, it's completely pointless to do that. But as you complete the mission, the more you complete it, the lower the "instant-completion" cost becomes.

 

But if you're doing the mission and you get something like 59/60 kills when the battle ends, instead of playing through a whole new 10-minute battle, you can just pay a small amount (e.g. 50 crystals) to add that one missing kill and complete the mission to get the full reward.

 

I'll give an example:

 

 

Mission: Earn experience 0/1000

Reward: 2000 crystals

Instant completion cost: 4000 crystals.

 

Mission progress:

100/1000 exp  =  3800 completion cost

500/1000 exp  =  2000 completion cost

900/1000 exp  =  200 completion cost

990/1000 exp  =  20 completion cost

 

 

 

 

This feature is also good if you simply don't have time to play, but you want to keep the mission chain going, so you pay extra for the mission to instantly complete it without playing.

 

---

 

Also, as an additional measure that would encourage players to stay till the end, I'd like to reference this idea, that suggests addition of "crates", which would be rewarded at the end of a battle randomly to players, who stayed until the end. So staying in a battle (regardless of whether you win or lose) means having a chance to receive a crate with potentially valuable items.

[lukey0 27,543]

Nice ideas!

 

I think 1. , 2. and 4. would work very well together. It'd eliminate the problem of only have 1-2 kills left and having to play another round just to complete the mission. It also keeps the Deves happy because players would have to play till the end in battles. 

 

Win - Win situation IMO. 

[Crimson_Tank 285]

A good way to fix missions, is instead of getting all supply missions that basically give you 8 of two supplies, would be able to choose from crystals and supplies. And let's be real after sergent major, anything that doesn't give you at least 25 supplies of each isn't enough supplies. Or at least 2k crystals. Seeing as how everything has stayed the same, it might seem too much, but seeing the prices of everything, it's really not. You have to take into consideration paints, modules, guns, hulls, upgrades, speed-ups, supplies, Modifications so M1s, M2s and so on. The economy right now in my opinion at least is killing Tanki. 

[Maf 32,324]

A good way to fix missions, is instead of getting all supply missions that basically give you 8 of two supplies, would be able to choose from crystals and supplies. And let's be real after sergent major, anything that doesn't give you at least 25 supplies of each isn't enough supplies. Or at least 2k crystals. Seeing as how everything has stayed the same, it might seem too much, but seeing the prices of everything, it's really not. You have to take into consideration paints, modules, guns, hulls, upgrades, speed-ups, supplies, Modifications so M1s, M2s and so on. The economy right now in my opinion at least is killing Tanki. 

I get what you mean, but unfortunately it can't be done. Devs would gladly give everyone 10x the amount of supplies and crystals from missions, but at the same time they need players to not have enough of those in order to buy more with crystals and thus support the project. So it needs to be a carefully balanced system, which involved very specific amount of rewards and a specific ratio between crystal and supply rewards.

[TheBlackChick 319]

This would surely make the devs happy as less people would be leaving during the battle and points 1,3,4 make up for suggestion number 2 IMO so there would be an improvement for players as well in comparisson with the present situation. However, this donesn't solve the main problem: why do people leave?

[Maf 32,324]

why do people leave?

2 main reasons:

 - they leave as soon as their mission is completed

 - the team balance is poor so they don't want to stay in a losing team

[Pyre 3,485]

Wow, nice idea!

[BlackWasp777 4,498]

Going along with the idea that missions progress is onl yaccounted after you ended a battle,I would like to add one thing:

 

- Leave the missions in the lobby where they were during the matchmaking test

- this means: keep the mission button removed.

- in matchmaking battles, the battle statistics (TAB-screen) shows you the status of your missions. It could read like this

 

 

Mission status (progress is accounted after the battle ends)

• Mission 1: Double Armour creates 5/8
• Mission 2: completed
• Mission 3: Experience in CTF: 342/500

 

You can not claim them, you can not change them in the Tab-Status display (this would cost time in battles) - it is just a check. And it reads, that the status changes after the battle ends.

 

 

Again, it only makes sense if the missions get adopted to fit into that sceme. It does not make sense to have missions for 500xp, if the averate score achieved in a battle is 400xp.

[splitterpoint 10,986]

Rather focus on fixing the battle reward itself and removing the missions entirely so this whole matchmaking becomes obsolete and we can keep the battle list. This doesn't have to get more complicated than it already is.

[TheBlackChick 319]

 

I think increasing rewards for both winning and losing side wouodn't make up for a removal of the daily missions. Not even if the losing side can actually get some decent rewards. Daily missions motivate players to play on a daily basis and getting rid of them => less people playing. The actual system is bad, but this isn't a solution I'd recommend.

[KILL_BILL_CHAUHAN 2,505]

many player use to play long battle and just before the battle is about to finish they claim there 3hr premium mission.

 

I don't know from where Devs get those ideas and make people hate them even more

[BlackWasp777 4,498]

Rather focus on fixing the battle reward itself and removing the missions entirely so this whole matchmaking becomes obsolete and we can keep the battle list. This doesn't have to get more complicated than it already is.

It's not so easy IMHO. While you are right for sure that the difference between the rewards for winner/looser needs improvement, one could say that this is like it is in order to make the players consume more drugs (why would someone spend money on drugs if winning/loosing makes almost no difference in crystals). Tanki lives on that.

 

Missions on the other hand are a measure to get the players into playing regularely.

As long as players could complete their missions in pro battles as well, most players did not complain about the mission system and enjoed the extra crystals.

But then the battle button came (prequel for MM) and those mechanisms need a lot of players using it, inorder to create good battles (noone likes to wait in half empty battles). So the mission update could be seen as a meassure to lure more players into the useage of the battle button.

 

The MM as we saw it this week, was far from perfect, and in a lot of issues it was anoying. But it has potential, once those are fixed. I have no glas bulb to see how it will work out.. but I think that in the end it will do more good then bad. Beginners anyways can not handle the battle list efficiently (don't know rank icons, don't know maps, have no idea about the fund spread, have no idea of how to read score tables in order to identify druggers, ...) so the matchmaking is actually a pretty good tool in order to make them competative tankers that can handle a set of different maps - instead of playing just one over and over.

All others can join custom battles - with the pros and cons.

 

to sum it up: the game has a lot of issues that make it less enjoyable from midranks on. But none of them can be fixed easily without serious side effects. Let's see where we get to.

[D.a.n.t.e 475]

1. Yes. Mission Button should stay at the top. Grey when playing a Custom Battles is a good idea.

 

2. No. It is better that those players that like to leave after completing Missions leave rather than stay, hide and do nothing.

 

3. Sorta. My idea is that Missions should become more attractive to bring more players to play Random Battles instead of Custom Battles. Funds should be divided 60% for the winning team and 40% for the losing team. And Crystal Mission, Flag Missions, Finish 1st Mission should be removed, among others.

 

4. Complicated and unnecessary because my number 2 and 3 answers.

[Mario3108 462]

I did recently read and analyze the ideas deeply and all of them are really good. :d

[DontBeGreedy 26]

more sabotage

 

if i have exp missions 90/100 complete when battle ends, i join new battle, get 1 kill, and hide behind a building in my team base for the remaining duration of the battle to get the missions done.

 

they never have enough staff to deal with sabotage like this  ;)

[Crimson_Tank 285]

2 main reasons:

 - they leave as soon as their mission is completed

 - the team balance is poor so they don't want to stay in a losing team

Going back to what you said on missions, the developers need to acknowledge they made a mistake. I see the problem now. They removed the mission button to forcefully keep players in the battle. I remember in one of the V-logs they said they removed daily missions from PRO battles because of split community. But now the problem is in normal battles. The only way to sort this is not to force players to stay till the end but to allow them to do it in PRO battles. 

[Maf 32,324]

Going back to what you said on missions, the developers need to acknowledge they made a mistake. I see the problem now. They removed the mission button to forcefully keep players in the battle. I remember in one of the V-logs they said they removed daily missions from PRO battles because of split community. But now the problem is in normal battles. The only way to sort this is not to force players to stay till the end but to allow them to do it in PRO battles. 

I suppose you're right, but then there's still the issue of people abusing PRO battle settings to complete difficult missions with little to no effort, which is wrong.

[Crimson_Tank 285]

I suppose you're right, but then there's still the issue of people abusing PRO battle settings to complete difficult missions with little to no effort, which is wrong.

The sacrifice has to be made somewhere, unfortunately. 

[Redlinezak_EN 83]

Just as another suggestion to fix the issue -

What if missions were not daily but weekly.  Most people agree that the real benefit to keeping doing missions is the reward at the end of the week rather than the daily rewards (not all the time admittedly but maybe the majority of times).

 

So why not give all the rewards at the end of the week and make the requirements to gain the reward based on time spent in game that week.

So for instance lets say just for example that it takes the average player and average of 2 x 10 minute battles to complete a mission (20 mins).  So over 1 week this is 140 mins.  What if the weekly mission was to spend 3 hours in game ??

 

Because this cannot really be cheated this could then open up to pro battles also meaning players could complete missions wherever they chose but tanki would also be guaranteeing that players were actually playing correctly to do missions rather than cheating in pro battles for a finish 1st etc.

 

This then fixes a great many issues in one hit as i see it.

 

Matchmaking can still happen for new players who want an easy way to enter a battle.

Pro battle can continue for people who want to choose how they play.

Missions become easier to manage and more able to be managed at a convenient time for the player without compromising tanki's participation numbers.

Drugging becomes less of an issue as players can again choose how they battle (I realise the drug revenue is important so maybe the mission requirement might be 1 hour in MM battles and 2 hours in ANY battle)?

 

Let me know your thoughts MAF.

[wolverine848 13,097]

1.  Yes - need the mission button visible.  People still need to know what their "secondary" goals are. finish the battle collecting 5 DA when you really needed 5 DD? D'oh!

 

2.10-minute battles are silly.  Are there that many players with ADD?  No time to implement any strategy and having MM place you into a half-finished battle with only 5 min left = leave immediately.

 

3. Would only be viable if the cost was not high. 59/60 complete and pay 50 crystals for that 1 kill?  How many crystals go into battle-fund for 1 kill?

[Yisroel.Rabin 16,224]

1.

 

Did they say that? I thought they said they removed it because they didn't want people claiming the rewards and leaving. From the point you bring here, it sounds like the problem was that they were checking missions, which, as far as I know, wasn't the problem the devs brought forth.

 

2.

 

[Maf 32,324]

3. Would only be viable if the cost was not high. 59/60 complete and pay 50 crystals for that 1 kill?  How many crystals go into battle-fund for 1 kill?

The cost is meant to be high. Would you rather spend 10 minutes in a battle just to count that 1 kill for your mission, or spend 50 crystals and get 2000 reward for the mission? It's the same principle as MU speed-ups. If you use speed-ups, you're basically throwing your crystals away because you could just wait instead. Same here - you have a choice between waiting for 10 minutes or paying 50 crys and saving time.

[Maf 32,324]

1.

 

Did they say that? I thought they said they removed it because they didn't want people claiming the rewards and leaving. From the point you bring here, it sounds like the problem was that they were checking missions, which, as far as I know, wasn't the problem the devs brought forth.

Kasim said it on RU forum. But you're right, people leaving once they complete missions was the biggest problem, while people being distracted by the missions menu is secondary. In fact, I personally don't think it's a problem at all, hence my suggestion to keep the button where it is.

[DontBeGreedy 26]

The cost is meant to be high. Would you rather spend 10 minutes in a battle just to count that 1 kill for your mission, or spend 50 crystals and get 2000 reward for the mission? It's the same principle as MU speed-ups. If you use speed-ups, you're basically throwing your crystals away because you could just wait instead. Same here - you have a choice between waiting for 10 minutes or paying 50 crys and saving time.

we don't even need to spend 10 minutes in the battle.

today, after playing 1 full battle, i ended up around 20 crystals short of the mission target.

 

next battle i join tdm, get 50 score, and then hide my tank behind a building and go off for lunch.

(tdms finish quickly)

 

when i come back, mission is ready to be claimed  :)

 

players leaving battle midway is a problem?

forcing unwilling players to stay is even a bigger problem which devs will trigger  :)

 

atleast if players leave, somebody else could join.

mults still occupy space in the team, and contribute nothing.

 

taking further part in non-pro battles is pointless after missions are done, because it leads to unnecessary wastage of supplies, which free players have very few of.

[Maf 32,324]

next battle i join tdm, get 50 score, and then hide my tank behind a building and go off for lunch.

It took you less than 2 minutes to have lunch?  :blink: