Congratulations!!!
Is totally Faction Recruit in a mask 
(and congrats)
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I guess as we have no idea what the percentage chance of an outstanding should be, is 5% a good number? 10%? 1%? 
Seems to be pure RNG regardless if you’re 100% affinity with or w/o an agent uplink or if you’re 40% w/ agent uplink or whatever. A 1% chance doesn’t seem very useful unless I’m totally NOT understanding this.
If the base is 2-3%, then +1% would be a 30-50% increase in frequency of outstanding. But then the question is, does it stay +1% as the base chance rises, or do they scale together.
Personally I would avoid buying anything that doesn’t say what it does, and pester Funcom to start publishing the actual numbers.
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Yes, it is literally RNG. 100% affinity just means you won’t get a “mission complete” outcome, outstanding is still a random chance.
It’s always 1% no matter who you put it on or what mission they’re doing (assuming they have less than 100% affinity so you can see the percentage change).
Well that’s interesting, definitely both “+outstanding” effects (agent special bonus, and item) are way less useful than just using an agent who’s strong in the mission’s stat then. Except maybe on T5 missions that are <<100% either way.
No. Outstanding chance is not some scaling percentage of affinity, it’s fixed until your stats go beyond 100% and then it increases by a very small amount. I suspect that the requirements for tier 1 missions are so low that a stat item might be better there but on higher tiers an uplink or +outstanding trait should always be better.
I don’t see conclusive evidence for any particular claim on how it works.
If affinity is impacted by the +outstanding equipment then it is likely that base outstanding chances are also displayed there (until it hits 100%), which would indicate some amount of scaling to account for 0%.
What that scaling is, and what it does after 100% are entirely speculative, unless somebody has some stats or the backend code to back it up.
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I don’t know if this has been documented before, but here’s a special agent dossier from an agent mission. It is bound on character as expected. Collectors rejoice, you have to do hundreds of these missions and go through three layers of chance to get your shiny versions of agent mission reward dossiers.
Ironically, I do not want it and I will try to have it replaced with a regular dossier through petitions. Hilarious.
We most likely won’t get anything solid on the matter. Funcom loves obscurantism and the developers operate under the assumption that it’s good for the audience. Rather than reveal how any game mechanic works, they would prefer to hide it because they seem to believe that knowledge would overwhelm the average player.
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… didn’t we get the entire relaunch because even Funcom eventually figured out that being willfully obscure about game mechanics probably wasn’t such a good idea in terms of appealing to a broader audience?
The agent system could really do with not, not, not, NOT being a reinvention of the wheel they tossed out.
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No, they went for the revamp because they attributed TSW’s failure to the overwhelming complexity that presumably scared away their customers. Too many skills, too many mechanics, too many synergies, too many stats to worry about. Too much information to process.
SWL does the opposite. Afraid to scare the customers away with any complexity. Giving surface level information at best. Obscure everything that’s not integral to the basic level of interaction.
Agent system is a reflection of SWL, perfectly alligned with their new vision. Can you not use the Agent system without knowing about the specifics? Yes you can. Just collect your agents, send them on missions. Anything more is too complex. We wouldn’t want to scare players off again like TSW did.
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Congratulations on the agent. Agree on the shiny - not attractive and definitely not worth it!
As for the whole FC being obscure, it’s how they operate no matter how they say that won’t be the case sadly.
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I’m pretty sure that’s not how the system with it’s utterly obnscure affinity, hidden critical chance, long mission chains that aren’t clearly identified as such and further willful obscurity works.
It’s almost like someone hell-bent on being obscure copied STO’s doff system and tried to take out as much actual concrete information as they could.
So by all means, do lie to yourself about how the agent system is not obscure; direct comparison with similar systems does prove otherwise.
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You’ve badly misinterpreted Vandelay’s post. He’s saying it’s like everything else in SWL:
“Obscure everything not integral to basic interaction” means it is obscure.
TSW’s wheel was obscure in a very different way than SWL’s UI is. TSW’s wheel had everything right there visible and up front, it was just hard to get into. SWL’s UI is literally hiding information from players in order not to scare them with complexity. The Agent system is one of those UI items that literally hides its complexity so that the ordinary player can
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Oh dear. You’re saying Funcom really are so bloody stupid to think casual players like not being able to tell why those agents that allegedly drop from missions never actualy do drop, they actually like not knowing why the agent they heard about and really want won’t ever drop for them, yes, Funcom think people like not having any information how to best get those allimportant critical successes they need to actually get the cool rewards?
That’s… damn, a dev team can’t actually be that delusional, can it?
Have you seen the character sheet? Intentionally obscures glyph stats so as not to scare off players. The Agent UI doesn’t even show fatigue. Why would it show anything more complex?
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that can be disproved easily by seeing agents having 0% or 1%. If yours were true then they would always start at the base outstanding chance. Also you would have seen more outstanding in urgent missions which are the only one running at 33-60%. Never seen any which points on that 33% mission most likely has 1/3 outstanding chance then 100% missions.
And if you read what I’ve written about uplink or +outstanding trait (and how it doesn’t work as uplink item, either by design or by bug) you wouldn’t suggest they ate better then affinity, again 
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You do understand that the questions “what does it show” and “what should it show” are not in fact freely interchangeable, right?
As such, not showing fatigue does not actually prove the UI is simple in any good way. On the contrary. I very much doubt the average player wants to feel “damn, I shouldn’t have done that interesting-sounding 15 min mission, because now I can’t send the agent on a long one before logging off”.
Simple fun for the average player would be “it is easy to make right decisions”.
The agent system is an epic fail in that respect.
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Who is saying anything about it being simple in a good way?!
I don’t think anyone here is arguing the UI is simple in a good way. It’s simple because Funcom thought it should be simplified through obscuring, which is not something unique to the agent system. It’s a reoccurring decision across SWL.
“What should it show” is subjective. In the context of the agent system, the developers thought the players could do without fatigue and outstanding chance. Those values are beyond the level of complexity they believe the playerbase deserves.
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