I would say that this has been my biggest issue with the agent system thus far.
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Still nothing for me. Ran I don’t know how many dungeons last night/this morning. About 8 or 9 scens and cleared all SC and BM Action/Sabotage missions while waiting on the dungeon queues. Not to mention what I did the night before, before it started raining men in Agartha and I had to quit for the day.
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Yeah, there’s something really weird going on with the faction related Agent missions. There’s no way to twist it where they make sense.
It just occurred to me that for a new player, the agent system should feel like it is legitimately part of the game.
One way of achieving that would be to have some dossiers as achievement rewards, including some for automatic achievements that happen as part of story progression. That way, a new player would be guaranteed not to potentially wait until they’ve run out of story before getting more agents.
As a side benefit, achievement-tied dossiers would’ve been a great way to ensure old players get their hands on some agents without that horrible sinking feeling Funcom’s just trying to get them to re-grind old content, again. Of course, that’s assuming the engine actually allows retroactively handing out new stuff tied to old achievements, so maybe it is too much of a stretch? Idk.
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Thus far, I enjoy the agent system for what it is. I love lore, and it reminds me of collecting hockey cards as a kid.
That said, the lowest mission rewards might need to be looked at a bit. Some distillates were giving less XP to items than green items. This feels a little frustrating, especially since they cost anima shards to empower. For those of us starting the system at 50, who are in epics or higher… this is lacklustre. I know you want to not have the distillates be too powerful, but maybe removing the anima shard costs if possible would make the rewards more appreciated.
The dossier drop feels low, but I also understand that since there’s 40 to collect, you want it to take some time. I’m wondering if people should be given a second agent after 5 or 10 missions so that they can be more invested in the system and use the two slots they have. Maybe having an increasing % chance for an agent to drop for each mission in which you don’t get a dossier would be useful as well.
I’d also love to see different rewards like cosmetics for certain missions (well, they may be there at higher levels)
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Way I look at it is they aren’t bees, they need sleep and rest, bees don’t.
I’ve not had much issue with the Agent system overall. What has bugged me is the interface. Super tiny console text for titles, names and descriptions is… pretty bad. Steal some layouts from STO or SWTOR if you have to.
Agent drop rate for missions is pretty bad though.
So far the agent missions are mostly improving my “imaginary” gameplay:
What really happened on that mission? The agent didn’t say much and is getting stronger. Should I be watching my back for a coup?
etc.
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Is Carter a Lumie though? I had thought all of the factions mentioned recruiting her at the end of “carter unleashed”
I’m not too fussed about the drop rate for dossiers, but it’s definitely better having two than one. It’s meant to be a long-term grind, after all. Assuming it’s 1/50 as some early conjecture suggested, after a year or 2 you’d’ve probably acquired most, if not all, of the dossiers, through drops and the AH.
The fatigue downtime was certainly disappointing.
It would be a nice change if my Dragon’s agent hadn’t helped Geary, but I also just imagined one of those involved was a double agent. Took some mental gymnastics, mind.
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+1 for drop rate adjustment, at least until you have 3 agents.
+1 for removal of fatigue, there’s enough artificial gating as is.
It’s like they don’t test these features with actual players before releasing them into the wild. O if they are being tested, you need a better testing pool.
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The fatigue makes no sense as there is no warning. Just the red skull afterwards. If you had a warning they’re getting fatigued, then you could rest them.
The drop rate, I want to whine as I did get one the first day and zero since - doing a variety of missions in all zones and many scenarios. So, I’ve gone back to doing my challenges and a couple of missions. When they drop they drop, but I don’t want to get frustrated with the system.
I do wish the text was bigger on the interface. I don’t read all of it as it’s so tiny. Do the programs use magnifying glasses to set the type?
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This is a good idea, i like it 
It would be better to have faction specific agents yes, would make it feel way more genuine since you finally get to rank up in the faction and send out your own agents.
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I would love if the countdown timer shown was for the time the mission will last not how long until resets to another mission.
Although it’s a bit awkward, you can pretty much tell the mission length by the XP earned box. I forget the actual numbers but 180 = 15 minutes, 960 = 1 hour, 1280 = 4 hours that sorta thing.
Checking the EXP reward of an assignment is the only hint we have nowadays as to the time it will take to complete. It would have been great to have therequired time be explicitely stated on the mission panel.
Gebbeth’s idea of an awarded Agent at lvl 50 is very interesting and coherent with the Faction system.
You get promoted to the highest rank : you get a minion - fetch me coffee, spawn.
I believe the system as designed now would work well for new players in progress, but us, people of lvl50 are not runnning the story content everyday so it makes us redo some specific tasks and thus it is very frustrating if we don’t get anything in exchange.
Another suggestion would be to award a Region specific agent upon Region’s completition : ex. you complete New England and move to Egypt, you get an agent related to New England, some kind of “follower”.
Could be a “low” agent, just something to give players a feeling of achievement and grant more options as to whom assign to a task.
This would grant players with a somewhat decent influx of agents to choose between while keeping the low drop rate on missions/scenarios/dungeons.
I am still stuck with one agent, incompatible with my faction, that is not interesting regarding the bonus she will provide upon getting to lvl 50.
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I agree with a lot of what’s being said here.
- the font’s too small
- the fatigue needs a meter
- impure distillates less than 250cc are worthless
- I’d rather see the duration of the mission on the list than the time until it changes, unless it’s about to expire
- Miss Faction Recruit does kinda look like a new Illuminati recruit
- level 15 is too early
I have a lowbie alt who’s actually in Savage Coast. She hasn’t been to Blue Mountain yet. Her level 3 Faction Recruit was rescuing Wabanaki from wendigoes at the trailer park in Blue Mountain on day one. If you’re going to put all the Solomon Island content in the first level of missions, maybe don’t start until we’ve at least reached Blue Mountain? Or possibly Egypt, so our brand new normal human greenhorn trainee with no equipment isn’t soloing the same missions we are.
- I think exhaustion / incapacity will be fine, once we have more agents (and a visible indication of impending exhaustion)
I don’t think 8 hours is too long to be exhausted. I think it’s perfectly reasonable to give someone 16 hours off after an 8 hour shift. The problem is we don’t have anyone else to take the next shift. We’re supposed to be choosing agents from our network to send out on the mission we want to complete, but at this early stage, we’re not there yet. We’re choosing which mission we want our single agent to attempt. This will be less of an issue once we have more agents than slots to assign them to, so I’d file this one under drop rate.
- I think the drop rate is less of a problem than the slow start with only one agent.
I’m not commenting on the drop rate, because I haven’t had time to actually play missions to try it, but I think it’s too early to tell. Patrons start with 2 slots and agents can’t work 24/7 to keep those slots full without massive expenditures, even if they get lucky and find a second, and it’s too hard to get any more agents to take up the slack. It feels like we’re not being allowed to maximize our usage of the new system without throwing money at it. The slow growth of our agent network would be a lot more palatable if we started with two or three agents. Getting a second agent when we unlock a second slot isn’t enough because It takes more than one agent to utilize a slot. And Patrons /already/ have a second slot, but only one agent.
Maybe some of this will be alleviated when we’ve all collected enough duplicate agents for them to start piling in the Auction House, when nearly every dossier the busiest bees find ends up there, but that’s apparently going to be a while and it’ll still require new players to go out and buy dossiers just to get enough to start with. If they started with 2 or 3 instead, they can still buy more to get the ones they’ll find more useful or fitting or whatever, but it won’t feel like the minimum required to start.
I don’t think it even has anything to do with the /level/ we start at. My Savage Coast lowbie and my level 50 are having nearly identical experiences of the Agent Network. They both just need a couple more agents to start with.
- The level disparity in starting a system aimed at level 15 when you’re already level 50 is the rewards.
Those first green impure distillates cost the same shards for less XP than rewards from literally every mission since Kingsmouth. Maybe the 2nd tier of missions will have rewards useful for Savage Coast levels. If you’re in Legendary equipment in Tokyo when you start, it’s going to be a long, long time before you get anything worthwhile out of this system. The drop rate won’t fix that, but what might help is actually /training/ your agents. Give them an XP bonus based on your level so they learn faster from level 50 handlers than level 15 ones. Leveling your agents is what unlocks the higher level missions that will eventually be rewarding for level 50 players, right?
[edit] Or maybe base the XP bonus on the /difference/ between your level and the agent’s level. Agents higher level than you learn slower because you don’t have as much to teach them, but the closer you get to 50, the faster you can train up new level 1 agents, even without special training equipment.[/edit]
- Could we maybe see the selected agent’s affinity for the listed missions, like we see the selected mission’s affinity for the listed agents?
On an interface note, it was revealed in the live stream that when you select a mission, each agent’s affinity for that mission is overlaid on their thumbnail. That makes sense when you’re choosing an agent to send on a mission, but we’re not there yet. We’re still choosing missions to assign our agent, singular. Early in the network experience, it would be more helpful to be able to select an agent and see their affinity overlaid on the available missions. (Along with the duration, although duration can be guessed from XP if you have a magnifying glass,)
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OK I hope I have this wrong but I bought some agent packs on the plus sign on the agent page. I bought 5 got one agent and the rest gear. All of it is character bound. I can’t even share with my alts. So why would I spend aurum on these packs when the chances of getting duplicates rise with each purchase and my only recourse is to sell the agent back to the vendor for an 80% loss? (Vendor gives you 4 for and agent the cheapest agent doss bag costs 20) Do I have this wrong? Please tell me I do because if not I got to ask who in game development thought this was a good idea?
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The time the mission takes is displayed on the mission information when you click it, before you click Deploy or whatever (at work so can’t check exact deets). At the bottom right, I think below the rewards.
Yes that you can… what i was saying is that information should be available front and center (instead of the reset countdown) be4 you click the mission.
Also there are alot of posts complaining about the Exhaustion of agents… that is meaningless after you have like 4 or 5 agents.