Just improve the missions..

[Jynessa Loraeyn]

The problem with putting in a more pre-written missions, with some placeholder text for stations and systems, and then claiming that's expanded the gameplay is that it doesn't really.

I remember Eve. Anyone remember those PvE missions? Some of them were fairly complex, with a pre-written chain of events. And guess what happened at the end - for everyone it just became a series of wiki pages and you sitting there going "Oh, they're asking me to do the one with four battleships with webs" or something similar. It made it less engaging, not more. When someone gives you the exact same story as last time, that starts to become silly - you see the seams and stitching.

So in the long term, I'm not sure that's where the effort should be put in improving missions. Maybe a minor faction asking you to take out 3 pirates in a neighbouring system is simple at the moment, but I'd rather have that than some complicated narrative whose uniqueness and interest is then undermined because it gets repeated all the time, until it's just a meaningless "Oh it's the Anaconda, two Vultures mission". To some extent, the basic framework of missions needs to have a generic element, so that randomly generated stuff and procedural parts can hang off them.

What would be more impressive would be something procedurally generated, and much more random - and that is fed by the background simulation. So a minor faction says "deliver x to here - there's people trying to stop it, we need it done, we'll give you lots of money"... and maybe you can ask for details, what the risk is, whether you want half or all the money up front, etc.

Then the mission is generated when you accept with any possible betrayals or horrible things that may occur being procedural.

It looks at the minor faction who gave you the mission - how wealthy are they? Is this mission meant to be 'covert'? Which will determine how much support you'll get in mission... perhaps two Eagle wingmen come with you (in the livery of the minor faction), based on the wealth and current state of the minor faction (not great, but okay), and escort you, or maybe they might show up if you're attacked.

It looks at the background - is the system at war? Is there an opposing minor faction who wants this delivery stopped? Is there low security in system and at the destination? This might determine what might attack you along the way, or what events might occur, all randomly generated, and with an element of chance involved too, so it might go off without a hitch, or you get interdicted by a wing of four Sidewinders wearing the livery of the opposing minor faction, and then later an independent bounty hunter in a Fer De Lance.

Perhaps there's a chance that when you get to the delivery destination, the person you needed to deliver to is dead (possibly determined at the start) and it chains in a new mission where you can choose to abandon for reduced reward or loss of rep, or continue, deciding how much risk you'll take and just how loyal you are to your employers. And then again, randomly determined stuff based on the background - not prescripted.

This could make missions genuinely random, and no two would ever be exactly the same, making pilot experiences genuinely unique - I think the skeleton that such a system could hang off is already there, but it'll be interesting to see where it goes now. I'm very intrigued about what Michael Brookes said at Lavecon as someone quoted - that sounds like the whole procedural mission thing could be on the way.

My possibly overambitious dream would be something that would be after walking around ships and ship docking has been implemented - I take a mission, to courier an illegal small cargo to a neighbouring system that is under lockdown by the local system. The minor faction who gives it to me says I have four hours. I accept. The mission generates a bounty hunter of a given name and a given ship who will now try to hunt me down, employed by the opposing faction. In the neighbouring system cops interdict me, ask me to stop for a customs inspection. I stop. They dock. Cops come aboard. I put my hands up as they search the ship. They fail to find the illegal cargo as I stored it in the hidden smuggling compartment I specifically installed. The cops leave through the airlock and detach. I carry on. The bounty hunter comes for me. Interdiction duels, attempts to escape. If I kill the bounty hunter, he would no longer be following me for the rest of the mission. I arrive. My contact there is dead or missing. A new randomly generated mission chain arrives. "Sorry, things went south. We need it delivered to this planet in this system. But we've lost all the money we would have paid you with. Please help us. If you deliver, we promise we can make it up to you. Fly down through the atmosphere and land at this station on this planet, then come to this bar with the goods." Circumstances have changed. Do you abandon the mission? Do you go along with it? Is it possible that your original delivery contact is dead and now this is the opposing faction and it's a trap? Wouldn't they have offered money if that was the case though?... all of this fed by the background as you do the mission, generated on the fly.

This might be a bit of a pipedream though

 

[Badben]

yes I like the idea of improving the missions very much. ElectricZ, you're ideas are perfect, and a perfect example of how easy it is to expand on missions. I understand that having scripted missions it gets repetitive, but it is repetitive right now. If we could simply get more missions with more varied tasks (I especially like the idea of taking out the transports drives without killing them) it will at least make the game seem a little less repetitive. also chained missions with stories, and maybe forks that give players optional story paths. Or maybe another mission to fix a previously failed mission, like if the guy you were hunting on the last mission got away, the next mission could be to relocate him in a kind of detective type mission (don't know how that might work, if you were able to question NPCs that would be cool, or maybe you start with the name of a known associate who you could either bribe or intimidate)

"Unfortunately commander, you underestimated your target and she escaped. Find her immediately and we can sweep this all under the rug. NPC NAME was a close associate of hers and may give you her location, or at least the name of someone who can. Find NPC NAME and make him talk any way you can"

Once said NPC is found, perhaps they'll ask for so many tons of gold, or you can simply shoot them until they talk

anyway, just my two cents..

 

[Dommarraa]

Once the effort has gone into doing proper multi stage missions, with branching, then in the time it takes to design a 100 new missions, you could instead write a Mission Designer.
Pass it out to the community to design them, with proper limits on the reward built in, FD would only have to proof read them.

 

[Zanten]

Always kind of thought this was something that the devs would have needed to get in front of from day -50. (Well, basically well before launch.) I know that hiring a whole buncha writers probably wouldn't have fit in the budget, but given all the crowdfunding interest, and the community the title had developed during its earliest stages, I honestly think they wouldn't have needed a dedicated writing staff. My suggestion would have been;

1) Hire a couple of full-time editors, who should be literate, as well as both knowledgeable and passionate about the setting.
2) Open up the opportunity for community members, writers, etc, to submit mission arcs, composed of one or more individual missions.
-A literacy requirement should be enforced, as the editors should spend most of their time greenlighting and reviewing applicants based on the quality of their story, NOT fixing up the applicants' spelling and punctuation errors. If you want your mission to be featured, then d not wryte it lik this xP xD XD lol11!1
-The applicants would be given a template, of sorts, to fit their narrative in; mission screen, dialogue, etc, etc, as well as the option to 'write in' certain mechanic-oriented developments, such as reaching your target only to find you've been doublecrossed, or even (if the engine could manage it) being interdicted while en route TO the mission with some twist. Along with guidelines, of course, such as basic behaviors of the main factions, rules (No Thargoids, for example =P ) etc.
-In the meantime, the system used to HANDLE missions would be designed to allow easy 'plug-in,' letting greenlit mission arcs be input by whoever the heck handles programming missions, and added to the database with little additional effort by programmers. Depending on level of participation, it might have had the potential for numerous stories, ranging from humorous to heartfelt, helping flesh out the in-game universe.
3) Do NOT make all of these mission arcs immediately accessible to a player at once. Exactly how it should be dealt out- whether based on length of real-world time passed, or time in-game, whatever, but presumably it should be steady enough so a player doesn't feel the need to grind too regularly, but not so constant that they can burn through all the mission arcs in a week. This might also depend on how much interest and participation, post-launch, writers demonstrate in helping to add to the pool of missions.
4) Make the logs of completed narrative-driven missions- maybe even including a credit to the player who wrote it- accessible to players via the ship's computer, so in their quiet supercruise-y moments they might get a chance to reminisce about that time they did that thing in that place. =P

Note I specified narrative-driven for that last point. The thing is, from what I've seen of current missions, most of them would actually be aided significantly in rephrasing them to be precisely what they are; job listings. No pretense at having someone address you as Commander, no attempt to pretend you're receiving some form of personal communique, etc; basically have the most mundane missions' flavor text restructured to sound like a Job Bank listing.

SEEKING: Transportation
FACTION: The Powerpuff Girls of Townsville 4
DESTINATION: Mojo Jojoland
TIME LIMIT: X
COMPENSATION: Monies

Bare minimum information given. You pick up the job, a working stiff like any other, do the task, and get paid, without any form of thank you or supposed response from another person, as the entire thing basically gets handled via Space PayPal. You're a mook, a nobody, and they can't even be bothered to deal with you like a human being. Ultimately, it's just a job you do for the credits, or for the rep gain, or even for faction influence (which are pretty much the three reasons most people do them anyway.)

The missions, on the other hand, would stand out, both in terms of perhaps having their own catagory/tag, but also because the entire tone is different. They're more complex, with actual narrative twists and turns, multiple objectives that tie into a grander tale, and more importantly a contact who actually speaks to you. (Well, writes to you. YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN.) You might even, depending on the faction involved, feel a tad invested in the outcome. The potential for making choices that can impact the outcome of a mission, (including its rewards and rep gain/loss) are, of course, also on the table.

So yeah. Make the jobs just that; a thing you do for the monies or the reputation, a bit of a grind-y chore, because that's what they are anyway. Make the missions something that offer rewards, yes, but also offer you some hint at storytelling, and even the faint illusion of doing something finite and experiencing something. You complete a mission arc, and it's done; you never encounter it again, but can access your records at any time to read through the log.

Again, though, this is proooobably something that would have had to been done before the game even launched, back during the earliest phases.

 

[Space Fan]

Always kind of thought this was something that the devs would have needed to get in front of from day -50. (Well, basically well before launch.) I know that hiring a whole buncha writers probably wouldn't have fit in the budget, but given all the crowdfunding interest, and the community the title had developed during its earliest stages, I honestly think they wouldn't have needed a dedicated writing staff. My suggestion would have been;

1) Hire a couple of full-time editors, who should be literate, as well as both knowledgeable and passionate about the setting.
2) Open up the opportunity for community members, writers, etc, to submit mission arcs, composed of one or more individual missions.
-A literacy requirement should be enforced, as the editors should spend most of their time greenlighting and reviewing applicants based on the quality of their story, NOT fixing up the applicants' spelling and punctuation errors. If you want your mission to be featured, then d not wryte it lik this xP xD XD lol11!1
-The applicants would be given a template, of sorts, to fit their narrative in; mission screen, dialogue, etc, etc, as well as the option to 'write in' certain mechanic-oriented developments, such as reaching your target only to find you've been doublecrossed, or even (if the engine could manage it) being interdicted while en route TO the mission with some twist. Along with guidelines, of course, such as basic behaviors of the main factions, rules (No Thargoids, for example =P ) etc.
-In the meantime, the system used to HANDLE missions would be designed to allow easy 'plug-in,' letting greenlit mission arcs be input by whoever the heck handles programming missions, and added to the database with little additional effort by programmers. Depending on level of participation, it might have had the potential for numerous stories, ranging from humorous to heartfelt, helping flesh out the in-game universe.
3) Do NOT make all of these mission arcs immediately accessible to a player at once. Exactly how it should be dealt out- whether based on length of real-world time passed, or time in-game, whatever, but presumably it should be steady enough so a player doesn't feel the need to grind too regularly, but not so constant that they can burn through all the mission arcs in a week. This might also depend on how much interest and participation, post-launch, writers demonstrate in helping to add to the pool of missions.
4) Make the logs of completed narrative-driven missions- maybe even including a credit to the player who wrote it- accessible to players via the ship's computer, so in their quiet supercruise-y moments they might get a chance to reminisce about that time they did that thing in that place. =P

Note I specified narrative-driven for that last point. The thing is, from what I've seen of current missions, most of them would actually be aided significantly in rephrasing them to be precisely what they are; job listings. No pretense at having someone address you as Commander, no attempt to pretend you're receiving some form of personal communique, etc; basically have the most mundane missions' flavor text restructured to sound like a Job Bank listing.

SEEKING: Transportation
FACTION: The Powerpuff Girls of Townsville 4
DESTINATION: Mojo Jojoland
TIME LIMIT: X
COMPENSATION: Monies

Bare minimum information given. You pick up the job, a working stiff like any other, do the task, and get paid, without any form of thank you or supposed response from another person, as the entire thing basically gets handled via Space PayPal. You're a mook, a nobody, and they can't even be bothered to deal with you like a human being. Ultimately, it's just a job you do for the credits, or for the rep gain, or even for faction influence (which are pretty much the three reasons most people do them anyway.)

The missions, on the other hand, would stand out, both in terms of perhaps having their own catagory/tag, but also because the entire tone is different. They're more complex, with actual narrative twists and turns, multiple objectives that tie into a grander tale, and more importantly a contact who actually speaks to you. (Well, writes to you. YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN.) You might even, depending on the faction involved, feel a tad invested in the outcome. The potential for making choices that can impact the outcome of a mission, (including its rewards and rep gain/loss) are, of course, also on the table.

So yeah. Make the jobs just that; a thing you do for the monies or the reputation, a bit of a grind-y chore, because that's what they are anyway. Make the missions something that offer rewards, yes, but also offer you some hint at storytelling, and even the faint illusion of doing something finite and experiencing something. You complete a mission arc, and it's done; you never encounter it again, but can access your records at any time to read through the log.

Again, though, this is proooobably something that would have had to been done before the game even launched, back during the earliest phases.

Great post Zanten. But the thing is, writers are pretty cheap. Someone to scan the content and say 'whoa - why all the adjectives?

For example: representative Galnet: 'A seriously important mission for what became known as the Foundation of XXX.'

A good copy editor / writer would avoid these mistakes, and re-write this typical Galnet as:

'Foundation XXX has a mission.'

Even Norman Mailer admitted to these adjectival overuses in his most acclaimed novel. And good God he is right, if you read the first few pages of The Naked and the Dead.

Reading Galnet reminds me that, whoever is producing Elite Dangerous is extremely clever - and I really mean that - but they are overestimating their own cleverness. They need to get some creatives on board (not onboard, as that is an adjectival sense! - an aside) Fun it up, put some dust and coffee-cup marks in the corners of the universe - it's looking a bit sterile..