Review mission types without special rewards; more credits options

[TheReaverOfDarkness]

Most mission types have a specific reward type, for example Tenno specter blueprints from Rescue, or cryotic resource from Excavation. But some missions seem to have no draw, no reason to run them unless they are part of an event such as a sortie or invasion.

I think the clearest example of this is Extermination which also oddly seems to have the lowest enemy density of any mission type except maybe Spy. (I'd love to see enemy density and kill requirements significantly increased in Extermination missions, especially with infested!) Extermination missions appear to give absolutely zero bonus reward beyond what you get just for killing enemies, plus the basic credit reward which every mission grants. They should either be given a theme reward, or at least have the credit reward boosted high enough to justify doing the mission for anyone who is short on credits. (Like a bounty payout?) Now I know that Extermination is a mission type which can have hidden supply caches, but perhaps those should apply to lower level Extermination (not just the very top end) and/or be more common. I didn't even know until recently that extermination missions could have supply caches.

Capture missions reward a mod, but it's generally just a trash common. Speaking of junk mod rewards, a lot of "uncommon" and in particular "rare" mods drop way too commonly and become very easy to obtain. If they are supposed to be so common, they should be bronze color, not gold. But if capture missions would award a single uncommon mod, especially from a set of mods which only drop as rewards from a handful of mission/event types such as Capture, then there would be a lot more reason to run them at least until you had obtained all of the mods from the list. Another idea for theme reward from capture missions is eximus specter blueprints. Currently the only reliable way to obtain them seems to be purchasing from syndicates, however some types such as corrupted lancer aren't available from any syndicate. This would provide another way to obtain these.

Defense missions have very similar rewards to Survival and Interception missions and I think that's fine, the bigger issue is probably that people prefer Survival or Interception because 5 rounds of Defense takes more than 5 minutes, and Interception is even quicker. Defense should be reduced to 4 rounds per reward payout to make it more even with Survival.

Hijack has no special reward. Perhaps a decent theme reward for Hijack missions would be something mechanical-related, such as blueprints for moa parts or sentinels, railjack equipment, necramech parts, etc. But there should be more reason to run Hijack missions.

Mobile Defense gives no reward except at higher levels. I would also like to see an endless version of mobile defense where you just keep going to new consoles as long as you want to keep going. Mods, void relics, or other basic rewards would be fine. The mission type is interesting enough to bring players in just because they like it in particular (as long as it pays SOMETHING!)

Sabotage missions are the main place to have bonus hidden resource caches. The sabotage mission itself should have a reward, even if you don't find any resource caches. Credits would be good, similar to my recommendation for Extermination, pay for a job well done. The supply caches also could use some looking at. The reward lists on the wiki show that you can potentially get very nice loot (such as forma) from the third resource cache, however the odds of this are quite low. This doesn't feel communicated in-game very well I think because the common rewards are so generally useless. If the progression of value in the common cache rewards was scaled more strongly (the first cache still pays little, the second more significant, the third actually decent pay) then players who had found all three caches would be more encouraged to repeat that in the future instead of just skipping them to get the mission over with.

Similar to resource caches, Spy mission rewards show more scaling on the wiki than the player is likely to notice. The third data retrieval doesn't need to pay any more strongly than it already does, but perhaps the specific mods offered should be less likely to already be obtained elsewhere, so that getting the second and especially third data retrieval has a much higher likelihood of yielding a noticeable reward to the player. After all, I am much more likely to feel like the mission offered a reward when I get a new mod, than when I get a mod that is easily lost within the pile of mods which dropped from enemies. This is why it is much easier to tell that Nightmare missions offer decent pay: not only do they offer mods which are actually pretty rare, but most importantly they offer mods which are exclusive to Nightmare missions. This means that at least your first several Nightmare missions will typically yield a new mod you didn't already own.

- - - - -

Speaking of credit rewards, I think any increase in credit offerings should be considered against the balance of credits in the game. Players should naturally run low on credits if they do nothing to farm extra; which currently is the case and these changes should not upset this balance, but rather simply offer more total methods of farming extra credits. I think this is a good idea because currently the primary source of credit farming in the game is The Index. That's all well and good, but after players run The Index so many times, it starts to get very stale and boring. The Index should remain arguably the most effective credit farm (especially as it offers very little other rewards {besides a strange abundance of a small selection of "rare" mods}). But players who are tired of running The Index should feel like there are other options available. Similar to Sanctuary Onslaught being a very strong source of affinity points, but there are so many other places to go and still get pretty good affinity. You get some credits just about anywhere, but not enough to farm them save for The Index and maybe Profit-Taker. So these increases in credit yields should perhaps come with slight reductions in your general credit payouts elsewhere, but that specific math should be left up to the playerbase research team.

If Extermination and Sabotage missions had a decent-sized credit payout, they could act as an alternative credit source. Also, if the credit reward from hidden resource caches were increased (especially for the third and final cache), it could reward more time invested in finding all of the caches, thus offering even more options: either blitz the mission or hunt for caches each being viable credit-farming strategies, allowing players to just pick whichever is more enjoyable to them.

Now you might say that giving more credit farming options would decrease revenue for DE, but I don't think this is really the case. They don't really sell credits directly (the rates are horrid) but rather they sell credit boosters. Players already get credit boosters before farming credits, and frugal players already just wait for a free credit booster from daily login or go to relay to get credit blessing before they do credit farm. Sure, making credit farming less of a headache will cause some slight decrease in credit booster sales on a per-player basis, but I believe that increased player retention due to improved gameplay quality will more than make up for it. Think how many players quit because the gameplay they want to be doing is currently credit-gated and they are just done with the tiny few credit-farm options currently available.

[Els236]

I mostly agree with everything you're saying, but we really do not need more credit farms.

Yes, The Index should remain THE place to go for Credit farming, however, as you noted, there is Profit Taker AND there is also Veil Proxima Railjack missions. Now, maybe they've been changed in the last 2 years or so, but last time I ran them, it was 100+K credits per run and with a decent Railjack, the runs were like 3-5 minutes each. An hour of running Veil Proxima would net you like 1-2M credits - which isn't as good as Index, but still nothing to turn your nose up at.