I like it too. I admit I prefer being given smaller chunks of content over a massive update if it means getting content relatively more frequent.
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Glad the missions are back. Totally disappointed that there is a gearing requirement. My main is fine, but alts that I just want to see the story difference - no thanks on grinding them to E5+.
And for those that are playing purely for the story, that’s pretty screwed for them. Leave the different levels for those that want to challenge themselves/get higher distillate rewards, but for otherwise if you’ve made it thru the tower you should be able to do the faction missions.
Into the Darkness. I don’t know if it’s a bug or just? but I couldn’t activate the card readers for gates w/o using a flare. That seems lame, if I’m close enough I should be able to activate them.
Venetian Missile Crisis. Boring with just added health to the boss. Doesn’t make it fun, just tedious. Especially as it just taunts us again with the rocket launcher we can’t have. Boo.
Rogue Agent. I liked the changes and it was fun. Rewarding an agent - yeah 37 and counting…
SA new mission. Public Enemy was tooooooooo short. It was over and it was like that’s it? Definitely was hoping for more. Concept was great, but way to short.
Glad to hear/see Dame Julia though. Glad the faction hubs are being used even a tiny bit again!
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Not a bug. It actually tells you that it’s too dark to use it.
Reading through these comments, it seems like I’m the only one who thought the bosses were decently balanced. Is it because I’m playing these missions at E5 (the highest I’m able to do them)? If so, then it is a scaling problem with the higher elites that Funcom needs to fix.
I’m with you on that point. Atleast partly. I did all mine on E10 and it didn’t feel too bad. But I can burn through 1.7mil hp in a couple minutes, and am honestly overgeared for even E10 difficulty so my opinion on this might not matter. I would however have preferred to see a more challenging scaling system like far more damage so that I cant just breeze through everything with a cruel delight and not see my hp drop below 80%
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I’ve never read any marketing material or heard any dev make such a claim, no.
It does seem a bit head scratching that E5 is a requirement for story content. E3…well, my alts that I almost never play are E3. So that must not be a grind to obtain. That said, it’s an effort to weave mechanics into the story and while I don’t think this particular one is especially deep, I always like those when I find them.
I am disappointed that Venetian Missile Crisis returns as the mess of a mission it always was, but now with more HP! Its not particularly enjoyable to try to fight one group and get two or three in the process, especially given the expectation to dodge things. And as they were nothing but bags of inflated HP @ E10, it definitely wasn’t fun.
The final fight was also terribly balanced, by lacking my ability to self heal because I’m stuck with the rocket launcher, which itself was frustrating to use because the enemies liked to split up, making the AOE damage pretty pointless unless you charged them to keep them point blank, so that you can effectively use the rocket launcher.
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why not letting all quests have range from E1 to E10 and scale rewards based on that instead of locking us out if we’re not E5? not all of us enjoy grinding dungeons.
many of us play the game for its story, and lock more story behind grindind seems not really the best way for those of us.
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All I ask is that people remember that we have end game players AND not end game players.
So…does that mean Funcom will remember us non end game players as well? Because with the way the power requirements for missions are set up right now and the pointlessly high HP and comparatively low damage/easy mechanics of enemies in the returning faction missions…it doesn’t : /
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Now that I thought a bit more about it, yeah, gating lore behind E5 IP is super lame.
In VMC E10, the “Elite” Phoenicians have 1.69 million hit points. 10% less of that boredom is still only a drop in the bucket.
Duos come with 2x 125k and single patrol mobs have 250k. If Funcom slashes all that by about 50%, you’d reach scenario mob levels (129k for a normal single wave mob) which I think would be reasonable.
I don’t know about the end of New Dawn, but I finished Tokyo with a character that still had green gear. 150 or so? But I kinda rushed that character and I wouldn’t expect that to be an average for a player who played through most of the story content but didn’t touch anything group.
That same character has 280 IP now, after minimal dungeons; mostly I just send out agents with ‘em.
The only problem with that would be that these missions will take less then 5 minutes and still grant a scenario worth reward. I think they tried to balance mobs HP to make the missions last about 10 minutes.
I did not try other tiers, but in E10 they do in fact feel like they buffed mobs HP to let them take more time to kill, nothing else. IMO E10 should be the latest, most difficult tier and 1k IP players should almost not be able to finish them at all. They should still be reasonable engaging for 1,2/1,3k IP and then again easy for 1,5+ IP.
But then again E10 scenarios get way too easy as well as soon as you move a bit from 1k IP (if you know what you are doing 
)
Except it isn’t a problem considering missions have a cooldown, and not scenarios. Also, there would at least be incentive to learn to speed run them and gear will reward a faster completion time, something which scenarios fail to reward players as they have their duration fixed.
No, don’t bring us other E10 Machine Tyrant again - unlocking something and being unable to do it “mathematically” despite being a godlike player is just wrong. If anything, there should exist an extra difficulty for 1500 IP or something like that, instead.
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So what ?
Rogue Agent is already like that. You just run around some branches, whack your Dragon/Lumie opponents twice, run around some more, use a dead custodian, run around some more and then wait for 2 or 3 shrines in Shambala to activate so you can hug them. This whole procedure does not need as much time as a full scenario.
VMC has a “wait and defend yourself” sequence with a boss at the very beginning, the boss at the last warehouse and another “wait and defend yourself” sequence at the end, in combination with running around all the warehouses (and most likely pulling half of their population) I don’t think slashing enemy hit points by 50% speeds this mission up to “The Cellar” level.
Also, there’s still that mission cooldown which makes “farming” a non issue.
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Well, honestly people with maxed out 1630 IP are supposed to sleep walk everything no matter what. But yeah, raising the damage of those bosses similar to scenarios’ boss damage would be good.
its a simple fix make boss and mob HP and damage similar to scenarios same level , this will remove tedium from chipping at boss HP
The Parking Garage says that it’s a solo instance when you try to enter it. I’m guessing the other 2 will be the same.
Positives:
Faction quests are always welcome. Return of Pyramidon. Fun with rocket launcher. TSW memories how I died so many times doing Venetian Crisis slightly undergeared as TSW noob. Introducing scalling and finally some good rewards. I don’t mind they are same as scenarios. Agent option would be nice.
Negatives:
The scalling itself is a good idea. However implementation is far from good. I am ele/shotgun user and all I needed in e10 was my cruel delight. Basically it was all about my cruel delight against their HP pool and higher defence. If I would joking my cruel delight vs. his special ability to bore me to death. 
I would prefer lower HP pool and some more dangerous attacks, so I would need to add some heal ability/ anima allocation changes.
And that idea to limit quests by IP is totally wrong. There should be story mode option with only limitation of your faction rank. Nothing more. I remember how new game producer mentioned all content MUST be available for 99 % of game population. Where are these words now? I am really afraid that people who came back to SWL and they play game only for the story will not come for next new content now…
And nonexisting marketing… Was it really hard to build up some little hype before the release? But it is something what is here again and again.
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You follow them on Twitter and/or Facebook? They made some teasers there for the last week or so before release.
And unfortunately, I don’t think the budget allows for much more.
Also, while I’m satisfied with the updates myself (Once the bruises on my bum are healed from the kicking it received), it’s a fairly small one. So I think the scale of the marketing was somewhat appropriate.
I agree it is more about “we need to release something and these three faction quests were easiest to transform into SWL ones” than a first teaser more faction stuff will come and it will at east somehow important to be in certain faction.
Btw still missing that faction mission in London underground. One of the best for me.