Hi John,
Thanks for starting this thread! You recently gave me feedback on our missions in the CC (another thread) and I appreciate the additional details ihere. Audrey Stevenson and I are working on a few tweaks of the reputation program and point economy is something we have in mind as well.
Actually, just earlier this morning PT we had a call with a selected group of members, mentors, moderators, to discuss several proposals. We are planning a redesign of some missions and that includes changes in the point assignment. We will keep this thread in mind as we work on the new point economy and mission design.
Now on to the more candid part. When we launched SCN missions in April we really paid a lot of attention to quality and did everything we could to not encourage point cheating. We know how you guys feel about noise ratio, quality, etc. Our missions are hard. Yes, hard! I don't expect everyone to write 100 blogs! If you're not progressing towards more blogging badges, well that means you don't blog a lot on SCN. With all due respect ;-) I'm not looking at you in particular John because I have to say I haven't followed what you've been doing recently on SCN.
We launched missions to appeal to everyone, from newbies to social butterflies to super active contributors a la Tammy (blogs) or Juergen (discussions).
Also, when you look at points for missions, don't forget the fact that these badge points come on top of the points you get for all the feedback on your content and for publishing it in the first place. For example:
For the Storyteller mission:
20 blogs
25 likes
9 5-star ratings
is:
20x10
25x2
9x5
+20 points for the badge
=200+50+45+20=315 points
And anyway, the pride of getting a Storyteller badge should be more important the points for it, in my humble opinion. But not everyone thinks the same 
The Rules of Engagement mission is a temporary mission (until Feb 1, 2014) and important enough (plagiarism) to warrant a high number of points. Anyone who has that badge better not be caught cheating or plagiarizing ;-)
As for Data Geek, your feedback is heard and we will keep in mind for future missions. Thank you.
Event participation such as a TechEd live interview or being a speaker involves preparation and the stress of being in front of an audience, these are things we factor in for the point economy. Maybe the points are too high still, I am willing to listen to more feedback in that direction, if there is any.
And last but not least, I don't think that writing a first blog can be as painful as giving birth 
Laure