The following missions are what I rolled.
The first one is ridiculous because there currently aren’t any Ancestral Level 30 mobs in the game (that is planned for the Korean patch which will also have this ArchePass system). The second thing is there is no appropriate check to make sure that a character can even handle that task (you can be a new level 30 character, and receive this mission). This also shows that Gamigo (and I’ll reiterate as much as I need to, the old Trion team that is now handling these same aspects) received the build from XLGAMES, and didn’t even bother internally reviewing it by at least trying it with characters of various levels.
XLGAMES also still doesn’t understand how to properly design the missions where it flows naturally from normal game play. It also shouldn’t force game play choices that players do not want to engage in. A more appropriate way to handle this within the context of the core game flow is “kill x-number of mobs within 5 levels of your character”. The ArchePass system is unlocked at character level 30 so having a level range restriction also assures that players cannot cheese through this type of mission as what happened with the original ArchePass where you could hit low hitpoint targets that are part of quests throughout the game.
The second mission is the sort that makes far more sense since it is a task most players perform to help their faction (if you look at it from a macro view though, it is also redundant and exemplifies the fact that this ArchePass system is being tacked on/a revision of the daily contracts system where they are also trying to define a lot more mission types, but doing all of it in haphazard fashion without considering how to make it more integrated to the core game play). In other regards, portions are also a redundant subset of the games achievements system.
The third mission is gear related (something that you do as you level up and progress). The issue is that after a certain point (especially for high end players, they are no longer performing this). Similarly is the tempering mission where there are many players who aren’t even at that point. Basically, specific gear related tasks should be removed as missions
Re-rolling these missions aren’t even the appropriate solution because that system is flawed (it is common to get the same mission types over and over again where you end up using up all of your changes; which means you need to wait until that resets – rendering your progression from the ArchePass system null and void; which is bad design – mission objective design is not XLGAMES strongest suit though). Furthermore, everytime you re-roll, you need to unlock these missions again using Gilda Stars (this was inquired into earlier and the response from XLGAMES is that this was intended by design).
I recall the old contracts system had stuff like spend x-amount of labor on specific proficiency types which forced players to do tasks in vocations they normally did not do. So I’m ok with the more generic “use X labor” since you can do that in any way that you wish (that’s the point of a system like this where you can play whatever way that you want, and it should eventually complete the pass objective organically from your play).
The “kill X number of hostile players” needs to be revised because assists don’t count (tested by others on the PTS). And some of the numbers testers are getting from this mission are in the 300-500 range. When you have high required numbers like that, this creative player base is going to find ways around it; using alts created in the opposite faction for example where you just trade kills over and over with a friend/guild mate(s) in a hostile zone.
The issue here again is they aren’t even handling this public testing properly which skews the feedback. Even in that forum thread, there are people only looking at the topic and saying it looks good without even observing the actual details for themselves (or trying to think about how it would play in the game where there are already multitudes of dailies that are required to get stuff like infusions and scrolls). These will be the same folks who will later end up complaining about how the mission objectives still feels like dailies on top of dailies. They really need players testing characters from level 30 without shortcuts (as we still have our characters from the original PTS which have a lot of stuff from Fluffy commands) to see if the actual objectives and rewards feel alright. Most including myself, are just looking at the mission types and the reward tracks. Additionally, the PTS server environment is still not tied to the actual Unchained backend (no Patron status active for example so no labor regen is happening whole online). This again is not surprising since this is how the ArcheAge team (incompetently) ran things before at Trion.
The other issue is also XLGAMES for shoving out this first revision based on their 6.3 patch or even at the very least, seeing how this system needs to be better integrated with in-game objectives (from both main story quest and then later dailies objectives) as well as the objectives from their achievements system. As it stands now, it is just a tacked on mess that fails to flow organically with the core game play.
