How to make good mission - Example

[AveMe]

This example has been taken from star citizen and it is in game ( I know many people think it's still hangar simulator: it isn't. ).
So, currently star citizen has only small open world, which contains gas giant, one large station, few planets, few repairing stations, a lot of comm arrays and some other places.
And here is example of one of activities that you can do in star citizen, It's player driven, PvP and PvE at once and it leads to emergent gameplay.
So, There are comm arrays. They monitor all ships near then, player can either disable or enable them. They are defended by security ships and sometimes attacked by pirates ( both bots ) you can attack security ships or pirates. For enabling 4 of them you will get mission to defend security post.
So, you have to fly to it and defend one of consoles.
Players can get outlaw levels for doing "bad" stuff, which will progressively make things worse for them (or in some cases better). Other players will get money for killing them. Outlaw can go to security post, find console and get rid of his outlaw level by hacking it.
As defender you can see when someone opens doors, this way you can guess where outlaw is coming from. You have to survive for 10 mins, and you will get money for every kill. You can also find some weapons and medkits inside station.

And here it is. very good mission that has sense and makes players engage both in pvp and pve ( You can also do this mission in coop ). Both sides can get reward worth their time. It's engaging and doesn't get repetitive.
This is how missions in elite should look like. I'm tired of current system ( and it's pretty much same since 1.0, a bit improved, but same ).

 

[h347h]

So actually not a mission and just Planetside/WoW world pvp batte zone stuff.

Sounds great for a small conflict zone or something but again not a mission.

 

[V'larr]

Ugh.

Any time I hang out in a Star Citizen stream and there's the same tired voice lines that you cannot skip or hide while someone's doing the missions, I mute the stream.

Not to mention all those missions require extra-vehicular activity, a feature that's not coming to Elite for some time.

We can get wanted too. (Have you ever tried shooting at a nav beacon?)

There's many reasons I'm interested in Squadron 42 far more than Star Citizen itself. And why I'm happy to be playing Elite.

 

[Belthize]

So actually not a mission and just Planetside/WoW world pvp batte zone stuff.

Sounds great for a small conflict zone or something but again not a mission.

Basically.

 

[AveMe]

So actually not a mission and just Planetside/WoW world pvp batte zone stuff.

Sounds great for a small conflict zone or something but again not a mission.

"defend this thing for 10 minutes and survive" is a mission.

 

[h347h]

Actually that sounds fun for a CQC game type.

 

[AveMe]

Ugh.

Any time I hang out in a Star Citizen stream and there's the same tired voice lines that you cannot skip or hide while someone's doing the missions, I mute the stream.

Not to mention all those missions require extra-vehicular activity, a feature that's not coming to Elite for some time.

We can get wanted too. (Have you ever tried shooting at a nav beacon?)

There's many reasons I'm interested in Squadron 42 far more than Star Citizen itself. And why I'm happy to be playing Elite.

1. true, that is sometimes really annoying.
2. It's mission example, you don't need FPS mode to do almost the same. Read it again and imagine that it's all ship combat inside giant station or something, it would still work.
3. Not really wanted, I would call it "annoyed" No player will ever attack wanted player because he want bounty because it's just waste of time. At least not in current game state.

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Actually that sounds fun for a CQC game type.

Kill N pirates in X system would also be fun in CQC. Actually almost all missions would.
And this mission could also work with only NPCs, but it would be 10 times less fun.

 

[h347h]

"defend this thing for 10 minutes and survive" is a mission.

I would call it an event, mind you I don't dislike the idea.

 

[PotatoOverdose]

"defend this thing for 10 minutes and survive" is a mission.

Your original post also fits the description of Planetside/WoW world pvp battlezone, just as h347h said. That's what your asking for, nothing wrong with it per se, just no sense in denying it.

Also, doesn't CQC have something similar? I know nobody plays CQC, but still...

 

[h347h]

Your original post also fits the description of Planetside/WoW world pvp battlezone, just as h347h said. That's what your asking for, nothing wrong with it per se, just no sense in denying it.

Also, doesn't CQC have something similar? I know nobody plays CQC, but still...

It has CTF.

 

[AveMe]

I would call it an event, mind you I don't dislike the idea.

Your original post also fits the description of Planetside/WoW world pvp battlezone, just as h347h said. That's what your asking for, nothing wrong with it per se, just no sense in denying it.

Also, doesn't CQC have something similar? I know nobody plays CQC, but still...

Well, It is actually both...
enabling comm relays is a mission.
Defending console is a mission.
attacking it isn't quest-like mission but it's activity that is worth doing.
place in which it happens is something like pvp zone.
All of them at once create event.
But it isn't point of thread so stop this offtop!

 

[h347h]

I want to say something like this is already in the game though. I think there is a distress USS like this where you defend a broken down capital ship until it repairs and get a reward at the end.

 

[Spacecat]

We can get wanted too. (Have you ever tried shooting at a nav beacon?)

No, but I've tried ramming into it like a doof. Thankfully, you don't get a bounty for that.

 

[AveMe]

I want to say something like this is already in the game though. I think there is a distress USS like this where you defend a broken down capital ship until it repairs and get a reward at the end.

nope, It's defend something for 10 minutes mission. My example is more about creating something that you called "event".
And it's less buggy...
Yes, I just said that SC is less bugged. I tried capital ship mission and it was bugfest ( long story, not for this thread).

 

[Archigo]

If we're talking missions, look no further than EVE online, lots of wonderful mission design to be inspired by, most would even be extremely easy to implement.

I especially like the emergent missions you can get from scanning. If similar high paying missions could be discovered in USS'es that would be awesome. Think discovering the location of a pirate outpost etc. and then it goes from there (you go destroy it, discover another, eventually leading you to the main base etc.).

My biggest issue with ED missions atm. is that they are all one step. You do one thing and then you're done.. It's pretty much impossible to make a fun mission of they are so short. My next biggest beef is the horrible time schedules on assassination missions (30-40 minute wait times are not fun.).

 

[AveMe]

If we're talking missions, look no further than EVE online, lots of wonderful mission design to be inspired by, most would even be extremely easy to implement.

I especially like the emergent missions you can get from scanning. If similar high paying missions could be discovered in USS'es that would be awesome. Think discovering the location of a pirate outpost etc. and then it goes from there (you go destroy it, discover another, eventually leading you to the main base etc.).

My biggest issue with ED missions atm. is that they are all one step. You do one thing and then you're done.. It's pretty much impossible to make a fun mission of they are so short. My next biggest beef is the horrible time schedules on assassination missions (30-40 minute wait times are not fun.).

Get ready for "If you want to play eve go play eve" spam.

 

[ShimEnki]

Ditto...what was wrong with the good ole days when Miss Pirate empress was known to be extorting npcs in system xyz...now go and handle it...no timer ...you have 24 hrs after that we will give the job to someone more serious.

 

[Ignition]

SO MANY mission types could be added to Conflict Zones, Stations, RES, Nav beacons... but no, lets keep the game simple.... its all the same predictable npcs wandering around and without any sense at all.

This game had so many opportunities since beta but no, they focus in keeping wider intead of adding gameplay and make the game more mature, its really dissapointing.

 

[Vasious]

My next biggest beef is the horrible time schedules on assassination missions (30-40 minute wait times are not fun.).

I know this sound like a dump question, but don't people do something else when they have a window for a mission that is 30-40 minutes away?

I keep on seeing this as a complaint about the timed missions, but you are not locked in to waiting around for the target, you can go and do other things or other missions.

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Ditto...what was wrong with the good ole days when Miss Pirate empress was known to be extorting npcs in system xyz...now go and handle it...no timer ...you have 24 hrs after that we will give the job to someone more serious.

There should be both; I thought there still was but might be wrong there

 

[Cynaqq]

Good points on mission design but a tiny difference between sc and ed seems to slip your attention.

SC is a tiny, itsy bitsy environment. The players are packed together and there are only like 3 places they can go.

ED has the largest play area of any game in history. With the addition of three game modes upon that, trying to make people coinside the core idea behind mission design is doomed to fail in ED.

In ED, all missions should be automatically created and soable alone. They shouldn't rely on the human factor to be enjoyable for repeat playing. They are no way near perfect yet but no matter what they do, it can't go the way SC goes, which again, is an itsy bitsy tiny game with tiny environments where everyone is forced into player interaction where ED is the exact opposite in these matters.. This fundamental difference between ED and SC will never change.

Edit: I'm not talking about the current pre alpha state of SC. I know it will get expanded with addition of new systems and environments. Still, its core premise is being tiny so people will be packed together and interact. It will never be 1:1 like ED is, ED will never force players together into handcrafted scenarios.