(I see whut you did thar with that alt name...)

While I fully and wholeheartedly agree with the sentiment that Missions do need a change in their payouts to help revive the Arcade, I think this may be a little too drastic.

Missions shouldn't pay out as much as they do, but making it so that there's no payout if you happen to help your friends on an already done mission is a bit too much. You're still putting your time and effort into it, plus often there's really not a lot of people around to help on certain missions so help is appreciated wherever you can get it. Making it so that any helpers get nothing kind of hurts the whole co-op aspect.
Past ideas of diminishing returns or a set daily limit works out far better in my opinion, especially the diminishing returns one. It lets players who are grinding for boss tokens still get their tokens, but at the cost of reduced heat and crowns. That works especially well for f2p players who just don't have the Energy to keep trying at the boss stratum in the Arcade, only to die halfway there.

My biggest concern however, is that while missions do need to be nerfed, the Arcade needs a little extra something in it to draw in players away from the missions. Variety is one thing, but there's no story to the Arcade and barely anything interesting in it that you can't find in the missions. Then there's the payout as well, which is oft less than or barely equal to the Missions, so why bother? The Arcade really needs something, like Arcade only events similar to the Pumkin King events. Hell, maybe make it so that you can run into Black Kats still in the Arcade, but not in missions. Then there's always more bosses to add in. I have quite a few ideas for that I'll be posting in the future, but for now it just needs something...
Then there's the whole making your own Gates with Minerals that is just too clunky and unintuitive at the moment, but holds a lot of potential. I've been trying to come up with something myself to revamp this aspect of the Arcade, but nothing really good yet. It's a tough problem to tackle.

That last bit though should be something that is already implemented in the game. If OOO isn't working on something to fix that, then they definitely should start. While newbies should be able to get help from vets, getting 5* equips from OCH and possible future missions shouldn't be allowed. Plus having to drag under equipped players around in Tier 3 isn't very fun at all.

How about boss missions, then? That would force everyone to do four-ish depths before they reach a boss, simply because a boss is always in the second stratum of a tier.
Maybe it would just be better to increase the Arcade's payouts.

D19 is past emberlight, which is at D18. If you get invited to D18, you get an option to follow the party leader when they go down the elevator. Even if you didn't, you can still be invited straight to D19. Or D24, which is FSC.

First of all, FSC is the bane of the arcade's existence, correct? Correct. Now that we've got that out of the way, I'm going to toss in a ridiculous idea. Have RJP, ICMF, and FSC only be available occasionally. Hear me out.

The clockworks are a group of platform levels that rotate within Cradle. Elevators are thus needed to reach these levels. However, bosses are contained on specific levels, meaning that the level will have to rotate around before it can be accessed via elevator. Therefore, boss missions can be unavailable for a couple of days. Then, suddenly, it can become active again. By this I mean that boss missions will not be available 24/7. They will be available by rotation. Say, every 3 days it'll be open one full day before disappearing out of the range of the elevator and thus inaccessible.

Now, there can be elevators that do happen to reach those boss levels, but they're a little more run down. 20 energy is needed to access the level, creating an energy sink. Less profitable farming. Onward to the arcade.

See what I'm saying?

I'm referring to the mission only. The arcade elevator will always access whatever boss stratum it has. Elevator costs are debatable.

Whoops, my mistake there then. If that is for only the boss missions that wouldn't be so bad. I just think we need to re-work the missions so much that the bosses won't be in it past snarbolax so it functions more like a tutorial for the game then that of a "start to end" thing as that takes away the adventure and freedom feel the game had before missions.
@Batabii
That is already a thing people do. I am guessing you are quoting someone but I don't know who, either way I think people should be able to be banned for exploiting alts for those kind of things.

@Waffle: scroll up a bit; he was quoting Zeddy.

@Coely: I don't think players going throught the progression system for the first time would be very happy to unlock the boss mission only to find out they have to wait a few days to keep progressing. And you would have a lot of trouble explaining why you can do it the first time but afterwards it's only sometimes there, lore-wise.

@Batabii (can I call you Bata?): Are you suggesting that non-cleared players should not be able to do any levels above their tier clearance? I had contemplated adding that in after what Zeddy said, but I decided that it was probably implemented the way it is to allow friends to play together and it's probably best that it's kept that way.

I like Klipik's idea, but I can see the point that the others are making that missions would be totally out of business for players doing for the first time.

As of now though, I’m for klipik idea because arcade should be the main focus of the game, not missions. Missions came after arcade to provide a storyline for the game and an easy way for players to progress to 5* gear in the game (hence the free recipes for azure and Levi). So the missions should stay that way as a supportive storyline to provide a bit of new experiences for the players. It should not be a repetitive process where players can exploit its financial payouts. I think that both mission and arcade need something that will attract players to them. Right now, the missions has taken the arcades point of interest which is mats, crowns and tokens. The only thing the arcade has left to attract players is basil and the NPC's at the core (maybe not the npc's :P). I think we should give all the things the missions took from the arcade and come up with something new the missions can provide besides the prestige points and recipes when doing it for the first time. The missions needs something new that players will do repetitively to get it, something similar to how Lockdown has the Kromo tokens. This way both the missions and the arcade will have a moderate player activity.

My suggestion for the new thing of the arcade (this is off the top of my head, so it won’t be that great of an idea) will have to do with the new system the developers are creating. The "battle sprites", I there should be something in missions that is there specifically for the pets and that something can help the pets upgrade themselves much faster than bringing them to the arcade. I'm not sure if this suggestion could work out properly, but if not the pets, make it something that can be done with the prestige rank.

I am really not sure what the new thing the missions need, but I am sure that the missions need something new and not stay with the things we can already get from the arcade which is the crowns, mats and tokens.

@Batabii #17
Kicking players exists for a reason. I join FSC parties and I contribute fairly well as a defender elite.

@Klipik
The first time, they can do it. The reason would be that the elevators are very buggy. However, they must invite specific players to join their party so not just anyone could join. Only those eligible for the mission (meaning they need to do it too) or those invited specifically to help.

Another possibility is to make the boss missions go directly to the arcade boss stratum and be one-time use (until completion?). Then they would be forced to return to haven due to the inability to pass the Spiral Warden. That way there would be more people in the arcade and the problem that many forumers miss, new players needing veterans to complete ICMF, would be relatively solved.

@Blandaxt
No. The missions need nothing new. They have enough already.

You can do missions as many times as you want, but every time after the first (not first of the day) you get no crowns, heat, or materials, but you don't have to pay energy for the elevators.

Ok... And in what this would help the game?

Yea ok.

That's good for the economy. Everyone makes less money, so CE prices go down. Good, right?

And besides, you can always ask to join your friends when they reach the D23 terminal, if you're really lazy.

In my opinion the reason why arcade mode is neglect is because the payouts is outright terrible-unless you run into an arena or graveyard or something. This is not just horrible for getting CE, but recipes too. I always hated it when I reach the floor with Basil on it in the arcade, and there's a recipe that I want but just can't buy, even with multiple arcade runs. Since certain recipes are not in the Hall of Heroes, I'll have to do many arcade runs just to run into that recipe again. Or... I can go to the auction house which tends to have them for a more expensive price. And since arcade runs have terrible payouts (ESPECIALLY treasure vaults, which is ironic), it leads to resorting to boss mission spamming. And then with your ability to hoard crowns with boss mission spamming, it'll lead you to use it for getting CE too, etc. So yeah... That's my experience with what lead me to farming for crowns.

As for your suggestion... I'm neutral about it.