Since the mission system was introduced in 2010, there have been continuous updates to the system to increase usability, improve features and expanded into new areas of game play. Today the number of missions has grown to over 4000 missions.
This week MindArk announced that in this years third quarter there will be a massive mission system overhaul, implementing a whole new mission system. This new system will be keeping in line with previous statements made by MindArk about making game play more streamline.
Mind Ark has publicly announced that:
"Plans for the most significant overhaul of the mission system to date, which is planned for release in the third quarter of 2019. Planet Calypso will be the first planet to introduce the new mission system. The other Planet Partners will transition to the new system soon afterwards"
One of the new expected main features to be implemented is that shared loot events and hunting in a team will now reward all contributing participants relevant progression in their missions based on relative contribution (whether the contribution is made by damage dealing, healing, or scanning), to compensate for decay.
Missions requiring kills of a specific creature will automatically begin whenever a qualifying creature is killed, removing the need to first interact with a mission terminal. Once a mission stage is completed, an interface will appear with the reward and the next mission stage will automatically begin.
This will make the iron missions more streamline, and more on par with achievements or milestones, and will save time for new people collecting mission.
Further information released about this update hints towards a "Bestiary" window will be added, this is where you will be able to keep track of all relevant information regarding your avatar’s current progression in the new hunting challenges that will be made available.
This overhaul will be a completely new system that will replace the current mission system, it has been stated by Mind Ark that:
"As this is a completely new system that will replace the current mission system, progress in existing missions unfortunately cannot be carried over into the new system. Therefore, we are taking this opportunity to give all participants an alert to the upcoming changes several months in advance so that they have time to complete any active missions."
There will also be a period where both the new and old systems will be in place at once, during which kills on qualifying creatures will result in progress on both the old and new system. This grace period between the two systems will extend approximately one year from the implementation of the new mission system.
After the implementation of the new mission system, if you complete the requirements for the iron mission during the cross over period, you will receive the usual reward, but you will not be able to begin the next mission of the old system. Instead, you will automatically receive the next stage of the new system.
When the one year cross over period has elapsed, all missions from the old system will be disabled for all participants. Progress will no longer be possible for the missions, and uncompleted missions will not provide any rewards. There will be a similar grace period of the implementation of the new mission system for planet partners.
The main reasons for the current changes taking place is down to the existing system being very taxing on the servers. When it was designed, was not intended to be used this way where many players have lots of Iron Missions at the same time.
Game play wise, players were forced to find the missions before hunting just so that they didn’t feel that they lost progression. This will no longer be an issue. With the new systems the mission of the creature will be added automatically if you participate in the kill.
Players will be able to play together and get rewarded for all the activity that they do when in a team. MindArk is also looking to create more interesting missions instead of relying on the Iron Missions for activity.
Originally the grace period was only one month, and based on community feedback was extended to over a year, this is to include kills earned in the migration period.
The new system will include more ranks than the previous iron mission chain. The rewards are different too, you can choose from a larger selection of skills and the iron missions will be repeatable.
Where the current mission system is based on kill count or points, the new system will be based on the contribution calculation. The progression will now be at one place where you can easily track and see it. It can also be compared with others and that can also open up for new challenges in the future.