The incapacitate mechanic seems very unnecessary. Especially with such a low number of agents. Only thing it does is make the system more frustrating then it needs to be. My suggestion here is to make an option to rush the mission, with the risk of your agent becoming incapacitated. That way it is a calculated risk you take and not just a punishment. Another option could be to simple make the agent take longer to complete the next mission (Example the agent needs 50% more time to complete a mission).
The incapacitated timer should start when the mission is done, not when you log in to see how you did on the missions.
The drop rate for agents seems to be too low for it to have any influence on what content I do in the long run. Some sort of bad luck protection seems to be needed if this is going to have such a low drop rate. Have done 75+ missions + other content without a drop so far.
A whole tier of more common agents not requiring the stars to align to obtain seems to be missing in my opinion.
The whole system is a bit too detached from the rest of the game I think. At the very least all agents could be present in the game, and maybe give you a different greeting or dialog options after you have “recruited” them. Maybe some agent are opened up as new vendors when they are recruited, or could help you at scenarios or specific bosses.
I miss more bonuses directly effecting how the combat works and feels, Not just a numbers bump. As a chaos user this could be an agent that has a chance to spawn instead of my doppelgangers.
This. In fact when I have been thinking about it, this is for me the main reason I am safe from “MMO ocd addiction” to collect the agents and grind their progression. The whole system is so disconnected from the rest of game. It feels more like some other game with no connections to SWL game. From my point of view it is sign of very bad design. It SHOULD player make want them. Make him collect them, invest money etc. The problem is the whole SWL/TSW has always been about strong story/lore/gameworld and interesting NPCs. This system has nothing of it - even stories behind the missions are so dull/repetitive…
The bonuses are maybe interesting for minmaxers, but are they worth all that grind for me? Definitively not.
What would make me to become an agent addict? Any real interaction with them in game world. To unlock some special quest in real SWL game. To unlock some hidden dialogue options. To have them as real NPCs. To receive some sms from them time from time. Anything what would be some level of interaction. In current state they are not agents. They are numbers, stats… nothing more than augments like in TSW. And why I should care about them?
I know the bugs will be squashed, so this is my main complaint. It harms the immersion when my Dragon sends an agent to do errands for the Illuminati. It would have been nice if each faction gave a different new recruit with faction-appropriate dialog.
Drop rate of agents in mission/scenarios : it need to be increased, there is no need of this low drop rate considering the time needed to level an agent. Keep a low drop rate for the “shinny” agents if they exist.
Drop rate of agents in Lair/Dungeon : this need to be increased, a chance of a drop in a chance of a blue chest, really …
Agents missions reward : mission at level 2 (and maybe others levels, i’m only at level 2) are not rewarding enough. Misson of 8h at level 1 = 1280xp + 1 item (asset,intel,supplies)+ 1 distillate (300) + cost nothing. Mission of 8h at level 2 = 2150 xp + 4 items + 1 distillate (500) but cost 10 items. Maybe reduce the costs of these missions or boost the rewards.
The UI : it’s really not great, fonts are too small and sometimes barely readable. No display of xp remaining to level for an agent. No display of what Prowess - Adaptability - Ingenuity does, for me they are just missions requirements but on the Stream they said each stat had a meaning. No display of the duration of the mission duration in the summary of the missions.
Incapacited : This mechanic feels very punishing. IF the only reason for this is a MOF sink, i think there is a lot of better ideas :
increase chance to mission complete 10% = 2500 MOF, 20% =3500 … last tier could be in Aurum, and if you have more than 100% mission complete chance, instead it increases OUtstanding chance to complete mission.
Chance to increase chance to get potential rewards 10 % = 2500 MOF, …
I prefer to pay for a bonus than pay just to be able to play.
The first thing we’re looking into doing is giving players a 2nd new agent for free early on so it doesn’t feel as limiting when you hit that speed bump with Ms. Recruit.
That sounds great, if we all eventually get a second agent for free. However, I would point out that it seems that players who have had their agent network activated via a gamemaster seem to have no chance of having additional agents at the moment. At least I have a real feeling that my network is broken: For 5 days I am doing more than the challenges (and ONLY action or sabotage missions), sometimes I do all the action missions of the respective area, but so far have no dossier receive.
Really good approaches.
But why not receive the favor, aurum or even a case key via agent missions?
Currently, the rewards do not really make sense, as they bring too little. Because I prefer to farm in Kaidan the container keys, because I have more of the distillates (just what the raising of weapons, talismans and glyphs as regards.
And in addition, the agent (I have only one) can make a maximum of 4 missions and is then disabled, for 8-10 hours. Despite a chance of success of 100%.
I could understand if that would happen if you only have a 25-50% chance, but at 100% I find that extremely questionable. Above all, yes, the faction recruit “rare” be put out of action.
If I look at one of my twinks, that’s the same (but also with other agents). 3-4 missions and then out of action. The system must be revised again.
However, I would point out that it seems that players who have had their agent network activated via a gamemaster seem to have no chance of having additional agents at the moment.
While I can bring it up, I am personally almost certain that your ability to physically receive dossiers would not be affected by our needing to manually add a tag to your character in order to activate the system. It’s probably just the RNG gods being unkind to you.
We have a promising fix that should help with a lot of the crashes folks are experiencing. Hopefully we can have it out tomorrow morning in a tiny patch.
Great idea I believe !
Still an annoyance, could be MoF sink “Pay 4000 to restore our agents Stamina” but you can still send your agent on a mission while you earn $$ RL to spend on Aurum.
Definitely ! It is ridiculous to have such low rates applied on top of the low blue rate.
I like the idea and would be fin to pay MoF if I decide to go on !
This should be taken into consideration Funcom !
And cookies with that? That would make it “too easy” to get an agent.
First things first. I love the agent system. I am addicted to the agent system. If I could continue to access the agent system from a mobile device while exercising, eating, showering and even sleeping I would do this and I don’t even know why. You’ve got me, you win Secret World. I love this shi* and I didn’t even seen this coming. Below is a list of what I love, then a list of what I feel could be improved.
first:
The agent system got me out of Kingsmouth. I cannot acquire agents in Kingsmouth, therefore I cannot habitate in Kingsmouth, alone, anymore. Thank you. Daily MoF runs in Kingsmouth, then logging out to play other games… this was becoming tedious.
I’m all over the place now! Finding fast missions in Savage Coast, Blue Mountain, Scorched Desert, City of the Sun God. I even finished Egypt. FINISHED! Finally. Why? Because I have to have something to do while waiting for my agents to become increasingly more agent-ee.
I’m even doing elite dungeons now… because there might be agents in there. Turns out, the first 4 elite dungeons aren’t so scary after all. Now I just want these decent-sized distillates. I should have started these dungeons a lot sooner.
The agent system itself. It’s just fun. It makes me want to remain logged into this game instead of all the other games I play. And now all the missions are suddenly a hotspot for potential delight at attaining a NEW AGENT! Which I haven’t yet, but whatever, it will happen. Missions are exciting to do again, and I love this.
I actually like the agent interface, the font, everything about it. It’s clean and sleek and intuitive and like most of your interfaces, it just looks awesome. I agree, though, there should be an interface option to adjust size and maybe even font for those couchsiters who’s faces aren’t a foot-and-a-half from a 32-inch computer screen.
Things that could be adjusted for more fun and more confused addiction on my part:
Fatigue meter. I know you know. But it’s so important that it bears mentioning once more for the umpteenth time. This is the most important information we need to have. The most. And it’s not there. I realize it’s in a mod now, but still, this simply has to be present baseline, it’s just too damned important not to be. When it is eventually added, please also add it to the drop down menu for sorting our agents. I desperately want to sort my agents by who’s the least fatigued.
Our agents experience level should not be a mystery. This is the second most important thing we need to know. Almost all of our decisions regarding which missions to choose while leveling our agents involves how much experience we will gain and at what cost, yet we cannot even see how much experience is required for our agents to reach their next highly anticipated level. Simply allowing us to see these numbers when mousing over our experience bar is all that’s really needed here.
Agent boosters. Oh boy. For me, the few I bought were great. I picked up a bunch of agents, I was happy, but then I got a duplicate and saw what a worthless scenerio that became. You’ll trade a couple of hexcoins for him, huh? And if I want to trade him in for a chance at, uh, ANOTHER duplicate, the cost is 20-200 hexcoins? Right, so you are basically telling me that duplicates = money down the drain. This realization, i think, is where most of us decided to immediately stop buying agent boosters. So, um, do you guys instead want to sell a ton of these and make a bunch of money? This is what should be done. When an agent drops from a booster it should instead be something like an agent bag and, inside it, there should be a drop down menu that lists each agent available for the tier of bag they are in, allowing us to choose one. Same should go for the gear bags if possible. Let us choose the agents and the gear we want. This way we won’t stop buying agent bags until we have everything we want or everything there is. Maybe keep the now garbage shady dealer parked in Agartha and let us sell the agent gear we earn by doing missions for hexcoins, if we choose to not sell these items on the AH. The green unbound agent gear we are earning on missions is quickly losing value, soon the same will be true for the blue gear. Let us have a hexcoin or 2 for these and people not willing to spend money on boosters can very slowly pick up agents over time by turning in their unbound green/blue gear for hexcoins. People will love this, I promise.
Increase the amount of active (agent) missions we can run. Yes, with only 3 of them available, my inventory is already overrunneth with distillates, but pay no mind to this, because I want more. Because I just do, because I’m greedy and I want to stare at the P for P-agentry screen all day long and do more stuff with it. There is no real logical complaint about this, um, just give me some more please? I need it.
Unpopular opinion, but I like the droprate for dossiers out in the world. I like the value they are retaining on the auction house. I like knowing that once one finally drops for me, I can sell it for a tidy sum. I guess the only change I think should happen here is within instanced content. A chance at a drop from a chance at a blue chest at the end of a dungeon is not a good system. I’d be happy if you just added the chance at a dossier drop to all the rare chests in a dungeon, not just the maybe/maybe not one at the end. After all, we are only running three of these a day.
The anima shard cost for empowering teeny-tiny distillates is not good and it’s making people trash these things. I’m sure this can’t be making you happy. It doesn’t make me happy either. I think you should adjust stuff so anima shard cost is tied the the xp amount of the distillate not to the quality of the gear we are trying to empower. Lower level distillates should cost a small amount of shards. Higher level distillates should cost more, that’s all there is to it.
Decapitation. Sorry, Incapacitation. No one likes this 8 hour business, not a single one of us. I have eight agents, I can see their (modded) fatigue meter, and I still don’t have enough of them to properly avoid incapacitation. I am honestly fine with it as a thing that happens, but the timer for it is just too long, too long for new players with just one agent, too long for people with a decent little starting harem. Let’s reduce the incapacitation timer to a maximum of 2 hours just so people stop hating an otherwise super fun new little system THIS MUCH. Also, like others have said, it would be really nice if our fatigue started dwindling after a mission ends, not after we wake up from a night’s sleep and first have to click on it, for reasons I’m sure you are already aware of.
Okay, that’s all I can think of. I’m only writing this because the game is down for maintenance and I was forced to stop mindlessly staring at my agent screen. Grr I hope these suggestions are somewhat helpful.
The Agent System is so horrible so it shouldn’t have been implemented in the fist place!
What were you thinking? I imagine “Hey Guys, have you heard about WoW garissons and the facebook game, you know that feature that has driven away more players than any feature prior? Lets implement it so we get the monnies”
System is clearly only for FC not us, and the only purpose is to get more money from us. I don’t mind paying money to have fun but I’m playing a MMORPG not a facebook game.
Right now Im being kept hostage by this stupid system, if I don’t waste my money on agent packs I won’t be competitive and as far as we know so far, the agents I need are only available throught real money.
I don’t know what to do atm, the only options seem to be to leave the game, I won’t pay for this crap system.
If some of them only drop in E10 dungeons rare final boss chests when there is a blood moon on Friday the 13th while Aldebaran moves in the sky, that doesn’t really make much of a difference.
And unfortunately, I’m not so sure I’m joking when I say that’s what I expect, given how focused on grind for grind’s sake SWL feels to me. (Admittedly, I’m probably too old to appreciate the gear system or something; crazy as it must seem to Funcom, I actually like games where there’s not only a chance of a drop of new shiny gear, but I can actually meaningfully use it right after.)
By ‘us’ you must mean ‘you’, since I game every day with people who find the Agent system interesting, and aren’t spending a dime on it.
I also know some people who are buying Aurum or converting MoF, and buying Agent packs. Some of them are OK with the results, some of them aren’t, mostly depending on how nice RNJeesus was to them.
As for being ‘kept hostage’, the system is a minor sideline to the game and main progression, and has very little to do with ‘being competitive’. What are you competing for… who has the most bling?
It seems you are overreacting to the notion that someone else has something in the game that you don’t. Ignore it, it simply isn’t overly significant. Sometimes by RNG luck you will get an Agent drop through normal play, at which point you can just sell it for extra MoF and move on.
I agree with a lot of the sentiments already expressed. It seems like the agent system will eventually be an engaging and fun form of lateral play. But right now, it has little to no effect on me.
I only have one agent, so my interaction is already limited (I choose a mission, and assign them and thats about it). That agent is now incap, so now I have absolutely no interaction with the system. I might as well not have it at all.
I totally get that Funcom needs to find ways to monetize this stuff, but I think they went to far with scarcity. I have no enticing reason to invest in the system further, currently.
If I had just one or two more agents, and could see some kind of tangible return on investment, than that might entice me to spend at least a couple of real bucks on boosting my assets. But right now, I’m not sure the system does anything useful for me whats so ever, and I certainly have not played with it enough to find any kind of emotional investment in it.
@Glaucon I’m looking at 96 E9 scenarios without a dossier drop (I would really like to know the probabilty of that), so your words about “availability” leave a somewhat bitter taste.
But thank you for the free key event that made that number possible in the first place.
first:
I hope these suggestions are somewhat helpful.