TL;DR: Only having 5 extra tiers decreases incentive to keep playing in the Mission Pass game loop. Mission Pass also said you could get all of the rewards with Extended Game Mode and it still makes you choose. Recommendation is upping total Tiers you can earn per week and just make Extended Game Mode another 30 levels.

Want to preface this all by saying I haven't hit Tier 35 yet (as it's not possible without paying), so if another 5 Tiers open up and make this post moot, then whoops.

So, I'm a little confused about this because it seems that the messaging here is off. The news article that was posted around Mission Pass says,

"If you saw a reward with multiple options and you really wanted both, don’t worry, you have another chance at it. At a certain Tier, you’ll unlock the Extended Game Mode and you’ll be able to complete the Tiers over again so you can select the rewards you didn’t take the first time."

Awesome! This is great. I've just hit level 30 and I'm looking at the "Extended Game Mode" only being 5 more levels. I like this from an in-game logic sense that weapons go to +35, so this is a neat little tie in. However, there are 14 tiers in the previous 30 that have alternate options.

In looking through these extra 5 tiers, I see that the rewards are all smashed together rather than just being repeats of the previous 14 tiers. This means not only am I missing out on tiers where instead of the outfit stuff I could've picked resources (which I was looking forward to doing in this extended game mode), but there's also some mission tiers that now have a choice between two different outfit pieces. So, I'm still making a choice between having one or the other with no way to earn ALL of the rewards from the Mission Pass.

This feels completely disingenuous when you read what the article states. It's very clear that was put in the article because there's an understanding people want to collect everything, but they way you've set it up means I still can't get everything.

I'm also surprised that the decision was made to smash these all into 5 tiers rather than stretch them out longer. As I calculated in another thread, you can earned 12.5 tiers of Mission Pass in 1 full week. With 4 weeks in a season this means there's 50 total tiers you could claim. Since 14 repeated (and technically one had three options so you really have 15), that makes a total of 45 tiers of content that could have been added. Meaning everyone that wanted to grind out all 50 tiers available would've had content to do each week.

As it stands now, I'll finish my entire Mission Pass at the end of this week and then next week the "Tier Missions" mean nothing to me because the EXP+Meseta is worthless on those missions. Most of the hardcore fan-base is still going to log in to do Dailies/Weeklies because they're "worth" it. So this really just makes the Mission Pass feel limp. Additionally, the tier with the Affix's doesn't even give you the Ex-Cube or Proton Spheres.

Personally, I would've like to have seen the "Extended Game Mode" just be doing the Mission Pass all over again and the amount of Tiers you can get per week increased to 15. This way, you could fully complete this Mission Pass twice, thus gaining all of the rewards, but you would literally have to do it every single day to not spend Star Gems on Tiers. Also, it means that you can miss two full weeks of playing and still hit your "max" level.

Look to the most popular Battle Pass in the world, Fortnite. Fortnite always has 100 Tiers in the Battle Pass and their seasons are generally 3 months (so the amount of tiers in the Mission Pass makes sense). A casual player can always get to Level 100 within a season because there's (rarely) ever any time limited missions, so you can log on toward the end and complete it. I still play fairly regularly and with 4.5 weeks left in this season, I'm already Level 100. This is a good ratio and one that would be similar to the 15 Tier per week suggestion I'm making for this. Additionally, Fortnite doesn't do a whole lot past-tier 100 for the Battle Pass purchasers, so I think PSO2 is actually doing something really cool with Extended Game Mode.

As I said, I think this is a really good idea, just kinda poorly implemented from both a sense of rewarding the most hardcore players for continuing to engage in the primary game loop for the Mission Pass, as well as feeling a little disingenuous from the original posting. Obviously, I don't think there's much that can be done for the current season other than maybe rewarding every who hits Level 35 with some of the mission cosmetics they physically can't unlock, but hopefully this can change for Season 2 to be a better system.

This forum right now:

@kliqIMB it may be because you forgot a TLDR version.

A succinct summary would prompt people to consider reading the entirety of the post.

@John-Paul-RAGE said in Thought on Mission Pass "Extended Game Mode" (Level 30+) (Wall of Text):

@kliqIMB it may be because you forgot a TLDR version.

A succinct summary would prompt people to consider reading the entirety of the post.

Haha, I mostly just memeing myself. But that's actually a good point. Adding to top of post.

@John-Paul-RAGE said in Thoughts on Mission Pass "Extended Game Mode" (Level 30+) (Wall of Text w/ TL;DR):

@kliqIMB it may be because you forgot a TLDR version.

A succinct summary would prompt people to consider reading the entirety of the post.

Or maybe it's because "I haven't hit the top tier of the battle pass yet, but a thing might happen to render this post pointless" isn't compelling reading to begin with. You can't see tier 31-35 without clearing tier 30. Combine that with the fact that not everyone even cares about the battlepass (personally, I hate the wretched things and wish they would be scourged wholesale from every game) and most casual players still haven't actually hit tier 30, or are just now starting to hit it, means it's not exactly a priority issue or one of contention.

And even then, you're not really going to get much debate out of "it sure would be cool if they displayed all of the rewards instead of unlocking them in chunks post-30" The extended game mode focuses on the cosmetic rewards, rather than the resource rewards which keeps it from feeling p2w which is a good thing. Doubly so because the consumable cosmetics want you to earn two of each to unlock them permanently on your account, and since players can't sell mission pass cosmetics, I'm fine with this model for the most part and find it hard to impart sympathy on someone who wants to be given a resource advantage like star gems or whatever else might be in the battle pass over other players.

Then to prop up your post by trying to not only insult the community, implying your posts are somehow better than others, and use self indulgent ego to randomly base an attack on a completely unrelated topic and viewpoint, isn't an especially great look.

@Nuebot said in Thoughts on Mission Pass "Extended Game Mode" (Level 30+) (Wall of Text w/ TL;DR):

@John-Paul-RAGE said in Thoughts on Mission Pass "Extended Game Mode" (Level 30+) (Wall of Text w/ TL;DR):

@kliqIMB it may be because you forgot a TLDR version.

A succinct summary would prompt people to consider reading the entirety of the post.

Or maybe it's because "I haven't hit the top tier of the battle pass yet, but a thing might happen to render this post pointless" isn't compelling reading to begin with. You can't see tier 31-35 without clearing tier 30. Combine that with the fact that not everyone even cares about the battlepass (personally, I hate the wretched things and wish they would be scourged wholesale from every game) and most casual players still haven't actually hit tier 30, or are just now starting to hit it, means it's not exactly a priority issue or one of contention.

And even then, you're not really going to get much debate out of "it sure would be cool if they displayed all of the rewards instead of unlocking them in chunks post-30" The extended game mode focuses on the cosmetic rewards, rather than the resource rewards which keeps it from feeling p2w which is a good thing. Doubly so because the consumable cosmetics want you to earn two of each to unlock them permanently on your account, and since players can't sell mission pass cosmetics, I'm fine with this model for the most part and find it hard to impart sympathy on someone who wants to be given a resource advantage like star gems or whatever else might be in the battle pass over other players.

Then to prop up your post by trying to not only insult the community, implying your posts are somehow better than others, and use self indulgent ego to randomly base an attack on a completely unrelated topic and viewpoint, isn't an especially great look.

I love when people get on their high-horse and then their lack of reading comprehension cause them to make utter fools of themselves. It's quite the bit of karmic justice.

First, that warning was merely to say, "Hey, if there's someone who has hit Tier 35 via SG purchases and wants to correct this assumption, go ahead." Because there's no way to have hit that Tier through normal means. However, since all of the later Tier items are in these 5 tiers and the thematic tie-in of +35 makes sense, the likelihood of there being tiers past 35 seemed slim. Also, "casual players" aren't checking the forums for a free MMO they downloaded on Xbox.

But sure, let's pretend that's what caused someone to check-out. That's why, I guess, you fundamentally missed the point of the post. What you've quoted about being "cool" and "displaying all the rewards" is absolutely not in my post anywhere. You did at least get that the extended game mode is meant for cosmetic rewards, which was primarily my point. Since you CAN'T actually get doubles of the cosmetics for each tier because they've slammed 14 tiers worth of content into 5 Tiers. This FORCES you to choose which cosmetics you want on extra characters. The section I quoted from the original post about Mission Gold Pass states that we don't have to worry about choosing. I'm contending that it's disingenuous wording because we can't actually always choose everything again.

It's clear though that you've paid no attention to the Mission Pass (which is fine since you don't like the monetization model for some unexplained reason), as the "resource advantage" would be checks notes some Tri-Boosts, a few Ex-Cubes, a couple Scape Dolls, and a whole DOLLAR worth of SG. Damn. Talk about P2W. Also, taking into consideration that the first run of SG will almost always be used by players to repurchase the Mission Gold Pass means that's it's actually LESS effective than just buying SG outright.

What I think isn't a great look is trying to tear down someone's post when you clearly don't care about the subject matter, didn't actually take the time to read through the post, and then were condescending about it. I even said in my follow-up that that I was meme-ing MYSELF, so calling it an "insult to the community" is laughable.

That all being said, it's fine if you don't think this is worth discussing. I know that this is a proven monetization model and it's a proven way to hook people into a core gameplay loop that then incentives them to purchase OUTSIDE of the Mission Pass. I've literally designed these, so I wanted to offer my commentary on why I think this one a) Fails to live up to its own promise & b) Actually de-incentives heavily grinding content.

nah it stops at 35. I was a little disappoint. I don't really care for most of the cosmetics I didn't get to pick, but in the future I might.

@DkP-Godslayer said in Thoughts on Mission Pass "Extended Game Mode" (Level 30+) (Wall of Text w/ TL;DR):

nah it stops at 35. I was a little disappoint. I don't really care for most of the cosmetics I didn't get to pick, but in the future I might.

@DkP-Godslayer Damn. Well, appreciate the confirmation. Since that is the case, then I definitely think this needs to be altered before S2. OR; at the very least, the wording of the Mission Gold Pass article be altered.

Yeah that would be pretty nice. Or perhaps when cluttering shit together like that, maybe they could avoid cluttering stuff that can be used by the same race/gender together. I didn't pay a ton of attention as to what is stuffed where but like, pairing male clothes with a female cast set or something would be acceptable considering your character obviously can't use both of those things.

@DkP-Godslayer said in Thoughts on Mission Pass "Extended Game Mode" (Level 30+) (Wall of Text w/ TL;DR):

Yeah that would be pretty nice. Or perhaps when cluttering shit together like that, maybe they could avoid cluttering stuff that can be used by the same race/gender together. I didn't pay a ton of attention as to what is stuffed where but like, pairing male clothes with a female cast set or something would be acceptable considering your character obviously can't use both of those things.

@DkP-Godslayer Definitely would be an improvement on the current setup for sure. The current breakdown is:

Tier 31

Group 1: Zamlord / Zamlord Guards

Group 2: Zelsius / Zelsius Headgear

Group 3: Belga Head / Body / Arms / Legs

Group 4: Nadine Head / Body / Arms / Legs

Tier 32

Group 1: Chin Beauty Mark A / B

Group 2: Photon Wings / Phonton Wings B

Tier 33

Group 1: Affix Augment Melee

Group 2: Affix Augment Ranged

Group 3: Affix Augment Technique

Tier 34

Group 1: Bunny-Eared Ribbon A

Group 2: Bunny Eared Ribbon B

Group 3: Bunny Earned Ribbon C

Tier 35

Group 1: Heretic Lord

Group 2: Candy Crown / Candy Headgear

Group 3: Joker Head / Body / Arms / Legs

Group 4: Lamia Head / Body / Arms / Legs

Yeah it could be better. I did have to get the candy crown/headgear even though I can't wear it. Since Cast girls can't wear everything that regular girls can lol. But malfonseana is like, adorable, and just emo enough, so I wanted to dress up my force auxiliary lmao.

@DkP-Godslayer said in Thoughts on Mission Pass "Extended Game Mode" (Level 30+) (Wall of Text w/ TL;DR):

Yeah it could be better. I did have to get the candy crown/headgear even though I can't wear it. Since Cast girls can't wear everything that regular girls can lol. But malfonseana is like, adorable, and just emo enough, so I wanted to dress up my force auxiliary lmao.

@DkP-Godslayer Actually, I just remembered, the Mission Pass is PER SHIP. So really even that way still has it's flaws. And yes, Malfonseanna is the scene queen we need in PSO.

She really is. My in game Cast girl is gay af for her lmao.

I'm sure there'll be revivals like with the lootboxes.

@Mattwo7 said in Thoughts on Mission Pass "Extended Game Mode" (Level 30+) (Wall of Text w/ TL;DR):

I'm sure there'll be revivals like with the lootboxes.

@Mattwo7 You mean like other ways to earn this content down the line? Yeah, you're probably right. And honestly, that might be going into the thinking of the Season Pass itself as well. Maybe there's some extra montetization going to be done under the hood.