3 key ways to improve missions post 2.4

[Marc_Hicks]

I know I do tend to keep harping on this issue, but I do feel that Missions are the most important part of the game, so my suggestions do bear repeating. I want to start with the caveat that missions have come a *very* long way in the last 15 months, & are much improved compared to what they were in 2015 & 1st half of 2016. That said, though, I can see 4 ways in which the missions could be improved even further.

1. Descriptive Mission Text in the Inbox: We already have pretty good descriptive inbox text for follow-on missions, which I feel *really* help to give the follow-on missions greater context & immersion. Alternative Mission Offers & Primary Surface Scan Missions also offer these inbox messages. However, I'd like to see this system applied to *all* missions we can currently take. Making the text related to the current State of the Mission Giving Faction, & having some <$Strings> in the message to insert info specific to the current mission would, I believe, help to keep these inbox descriptions from getting stale.


2. Tie mission rank/payout to mission difficulty: This element is already discussed in detail here-https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/380134-Higher-rank-missions-need-to-be-harder-not-just-higher-paying

So I won't repeat myself on that matter.

3. Have mission rank/payout tied more to the chance of Wrinkles and/or follow ons: Related to suggestion 2, the more high ranked a mission, the more likely the mission should be to generate one or more wrinkles and/or follow-ons. Also, the designers shouldn't be afraid to have such wrinkles create entirely new "missions within a mission"-like an Assassination Mission that wrinkles to have an Optional "Hostage Rescue" Mission.

4. Persistence of mission specific objects. This is obviously of greatest relevance to Surface Scan & Salvage Missions. Basically, when you do a system wide scan, it should create a persistent mission related object....one that will remain in place until your commander interacts with it. Making Proc. Gen surface facilities persistent, from the time of the system scan, would eliminate the kinds of exploits we saw with Quince (as each scan mission would have its own Proc. Gen facility created for it at this time....possibly even on different land-fall planets) & add greater skill to the act of discovering these facilities when you're on the surface of the planet.

With Salvage Missions, it would eliminate the exploit in which you can leave the mission specific USS, then jump right back in again. Persistence of Mission Objects would just be better, in general IMHO.

Thank you for your time .

 

[NW3]

Agreed. Those are good ideas.

 

[Marc_Hicks]

Oh, I thought of a #5. The higher the rank/payout of a mission, the higher the chance that the mission should wrinkle and/or have follow-ons.

 

[Faded Glory]

1. Yes, sure...

2. Yes, definitely, and get rid of the massaging of mission target / opposition ranks based upon a players rank. Elite missions should have Elite NPC targets or opposition.

3. Personally I don't think this would be a priority (but what do I know ). The thing is, not everyone wants a quest style of gameplay from taking a mission, so probably quite a few players would simply ignore the wrinkles and the follow ons because they are not what they want to do, and not why they took the initial mission. FD already know wrinkles aren't universally popular, hence they have made them all optional.

4. Yes, NPC persistence would be good. Would be particularly good if assassination targets (for example) were persistent so that when they wake out, when you find them again (within a reasonable time) they still have the damage you inflicted on them. Right now, if they wake out they come back fully repaired... But you don't.

I don't think it's an exploit being able to salvage two black boxes, escape from the ambush then drop back in to get the next two. The issue is getting the balance of the ambush right. I'd love to stay and fight (but even then normally the fight takes you too far away from the salvage, so you'd lose it anyway), but I like to use a Cobra Mk III for space salvage missions, and that simply won't stand up to the Deadly FDL that drops in as the lead of a 5 ship ambush...

But yes, missions have come on nicely, and the new highly populated mission boards are excellent. I'm sure they ill continue to improve.

 

[Marc_Hicks]

1. Yes, sure...

2. Yes, definitely, and get rid of the massaging of mission target / opposition ranks based upon a players rank. Elite missions should have Elite NPC targets or opposition.

3. Personally I don't think this would be a priority (but what do I know ). The thing is, not everyone wants a quest style of gameplay from taking a mission, so probably quite a few players would simply ignore the wrinkles and the follow ons because they are not what they want to do, and not why they took the initial mission. FD already know wrinkles aren't universally popular, hence they have made them all optional.

4. Yes, NPC persistence would be good. Would be particularly good if assassination targets (for example) were persistent so that when they wake out, when you find them again (within a reasonable time) they still have the damage you inflicted on them. Right now, if they wake out they come back fully repaired... But you don't.

I don't think it's an exploit being able to salvage two black boxes, escape from the ambush then drop back in to get the next two. The issue is getting the balance of the ambush right. I'd love to stay and fight (but even then normally the fight takes you too far away from the salvage, so you'd lose it anyway), but I like to use a Cobra Mk III for space salvage missions, and that simply won't stand up to the Deadly FDL that drops in as the lead of a 5 ship ambush...

Just a few things.

Mission wrinkles are already mostly optional in nature. If some players want to completely dodge most of the wrinkles, then so be it, I consider that their loss. However, if you're taking on a high rank/high paying mission, I really think the players should expect that things won't go as smoothly as a mission that pays peanuts. Otherwise, why would they pay so much, hmm?

As for the black box salvage example. I'm not suggesting the player not be allowed to jump out....then back in again. If anything I'm arguing the opposite-i.e. that the mission specific USS would remain as a persistent object that a player can jump back into straight away. Where the "exploit" currently lies, however, is that when you pick up the USS the 2nd time, the USS has magically repopulated itself with the full quantity of objects. So if I drop in & salvage 2 out of 3 black boxes, jump out then jump back in again, that USS will contain 3 black boxes, not 1. I'd like for the USS's to be more persistent so that they're the same as when you left them. Hope that makes sense?

 

[Faded Glory]

Just a few things.

Mission wrinkles are already mostly optional in nature. If some players want to completely dodge most of the wrinkles, then so be it, I consider that their loss. However, if you're taking on a high rank/high paying mission, I really think the players should expect that things won't go as smoothly as a mission that pays peanuts. Otherwise, why would they pay so much, hmm?

As for the black box salvage example. I'm not suggesting the player not be allowed to jump out....then back in again. If anything I'm arguing the opposite-i.e. that the mission specific USS would remain as a persistent object that a player can jump back into straight away. Where the "exploit" currently lies, however, is that when you pick up the USS the 2nd time, the USS has magically repopulated itself with the full quantity of objects. So if I drop in & salvage 2 out of 3 black boxes, jump out then jump back in again, that USS will contain 3 black boxes, not 1. I'd like for the USS's to be more persistent so that they're the same as when you left them. Hope that makes sense?

Yep, I agree with both your points...

High ranking missions should absolutely be more challenging than lower ranking ones, and I'd be all for opposition to be guaranteed for those high ranking ones. As to the wrinkles, well it's just a matter of preference, and so long as the wrinkles or follow ons engage the player and are activities that they want to do then I'd be all for that too. Of course, since they are optional, it's really a moot point.

I see what you are saying re persistency of mission targets, and yes, that would be great. I guess there are technical reasons it doesn't happen, but as I said in my earlier post, I too believe that it would make things much more believable, not to mention fair that the pirate lord only has 20% of hull left when I catch up with them...

 

[Marc_Hicks]

I just thought I'd use some examples from recent in-game experiences to further emphasize my points from above.

Over the last 24-48 hours, I've done 3 specific missions that come to mind-an Occupied Escape Pod Liberation Mission (130,000 Cr), a Surface Scan Mission (950,000 Cr) & a Bauxite Haulage Mission (courtesy of a Donation I made) (100,000 Cr).

-In the first mission, I was faced with a very large surface structure-comprising of multiple buildings-& within that zone were almost half a dozen skimmers. I had to repair my SRV 3 times before I brought those guys down....because they were fast, agile & extremely clever in their use of their surroundings. It was extremely tense & exciting.

-In the second mission, I was faced with a tiny "outpost", which had two wanted Defense Turrets. Yet in spite of that, & the huge payout, I just waltzed in & collected the data without an issue.

-in the 3rd mission, I got informed of 2 hostiles coming to hunt me down. Both were flying Fer-de Lances (more than a match for my trusty little Cobra MkIII). I was able to shake off one hostile, across multiple systems. However, in one system I let my guard down & dropped in on a Degraded Signal Source.....only to be jumped by the other hostile. Sadly he was able to destroy me before I could flee!

Now, can you guess which missions I enjoyed the most? Well you can be certain it wasn't the one that paid the most. It was definitely the ones with the most action and excitement.

The middle mission could have been improved so much with just 1 or more minor tweaks. The Outpost could have had a trespass zone, with the turrets opening up if I stayed there too long. The turrets could have opened fire on me after I got the data. Or maybe a ship in low orbit could have decided to take me down. Or a mission wrinkle could have appeared saying hostiles were coming to stop me from finishing the mission. Connected to that, there could have been a Don't get killed or Don't get Scanned mission wrinkle thrown in to make the mission more worth the 900 KCr I was being offered.

Of course, my experience with man-made PoI's is that there really is no limit to how large and/or complex they can be.....so it would just be nice to see these Surface Scan targets have a little more variety to them as well.

 

[Alexandr]

5. Increase the variety of scenarios and mission types. And bring more and more new of this with each update. C'mon, we don't afraid gigabytes of patches.

 

[Marc_Hicks]

5. Increase the variety of scenarios and mission types. And bring more and more new of this with each update. C'mon, we don't afraid gigabytes of patches.

I agree, adding more templates is always a good idea (we almost got a new one back in 2.1, called Surface Rush. However, it was terribly bugged, so they removed it. Sad they never brought it back though).

That said, though, you can also achieve a great deal of variety just through good use of mission text (via the inbox), judicious application of mission wrinkles & a high chance of follow-on missions .

 

[Alexandr]

New types of missions as a variety source is definitely what need to. But variety can be also brought in by just changing a large amount of already existed details.