tl;dr: Scaling multi-phase missions for BGS and PowerPlay with versus matchmaking, with varying objectives both lethal and non-lethal, encouraging varying wing compositions from small to large ships, and all play styles. Same content in private group would be "raid-like" co-op PvE, and for solo players the experience be the longer version of normal mission board jobs, with bigger rewards and harder and more varied missions. (Possibly being part of NPC wings)
Once you log in to the game world in any mode:
Attach PvP matchmaking for those who play in open, so that some AI enemies would be replaced by human opposition. You don't get always pitted against other players, but there's a chance you might. Much like Dark Souls invading system. People playing in solo or in private group would get a chance of AI interference.
Scaling difficulty
Apply different threat levels to indicate the chance of interference for campaign type missions. This way people playing in open would have a chance to choose from a very likely confrontations with other players, to campaigns with only a small chance of it happening. In case of solo/private group, you'd only get AI opposition. Failing or succeeding in mid-mission campaign objectives could of course alter the threat level to keep things interesting. Of course, determining how much AI opposition does a single human player take away from the mission would require fine tuning over time.
Intercepting
The party about to be working against you would see a mission pop up in your choise of delivery system, and depending on the status of the on-going mission they're about to intercept, they'd get a fitting description: Contract was accepted or is ongoing, intercept to [neutralize] [steal] [steal and take over mission] [scan] [get there first] [etc]. Tracking device was planted on a piece of data, package or a ship. Whatever. The overarching theme always being that the intercepting party gets the either the real-time or updated location of the mission runner, or a place they're going to be in so they can set an ambush for lethal or non-lethal objective completion.
Variety
Apply objectives to campaigns that encourage different team compositions and ships and a variety of space, SRV and on-foot objectives.
Example 1) Download from dataport in settlement A, upload it to network in settlement B, wait until results become available and download them, and deliver the acquired data to point C. Varied distances between objectives to adjust mission times. Trickle in some procedurally generated, BGS state affected reasons to linger in supercruise, normal space or planet surface doing varied objectives to keep things surprising and fresh and the participants in edge of their seats and adjusting.
Example 2) Space installations have hallways that only small ships can fit in, some of them have places you can only enter with recon or hatch breaker limpets. Downloading and uploading data or dropping cargo in these places would encourage small ship gameplay.
Example 3) Cargo transport missions could encourage teams to fly convoys of ships consisting of transport vessels and protection with either artificial restrictions (one member of team simply must have a T7, or the mission provides you one that someone in the team must pilot for the duration of the job) or with mid-mission events and objectives requiring faster wing members or varied utility or cargo capacity.
Example 4) Solo player on open notices an intercept mission on the system. It's a job to interdict and scan a data/cargo carrying member of a three ship wing. After the interdiction success, opposing wing can either eliminate, or chase and scan the wake of the threath in limited time after escape jump to SC to lessen or negate the impact of this intercepting action. If they fail, they might get a bigger threat matchmade against them or be a constant target of AI enemies, or have to work against time for the remainder of the mission. If the solo player gets away, he will be rewarded regardless of wether his wake gets scanned upon escape.
Powerplay & BGS
The missions in both BGS and PowerPlay could be generated from the initial actions of the BGS supporters / powerplay votes and ingame player actions and trigger from a certain threshold of either fortifying, preparing, expanding or undermining in case of PP or missiong running, market actions or security actions and such in BGS, so that the missions would then be targeted against proper factions and powers and cause desired effects and faction statuses.
Have powerplay-related missions that reflect their on-going objectives like fortifying, preparing, expanding and undermining, to encourage open powerplay PvP interaction and give variety to open/solo/private players supporting their power or disrupting foreign powers. On success and depending on mission level, reward players heavily with merits and the PP faction with progress on the ongoing objectives that the mission targeted.
The whole idea is to only have certain, limited, amount of missions available. Perhaps being generated at pre-determined times of day, especially in Powerplay, so that if you would play in Open and would want to go for the highest reward and effect, you would very likely be playing against the other power's players.
Issues and open questions
For example, fortify effort triggers a powerplay campaign to generate. People in all modes are waiting keenly to get in on the action. How many campaign missions should the effort spawn? 2? 30? 50? 100? Determined by the amount of people currently active on the mission system on each mode? Should it be emergent, a daily or a weekly thing?
If on-going campaigns generate intercepting missions, a person in solo mode could grab an intercept generated by a team playing campaign in open. Would this happen so often that people would actually never be matched against each other? What would the effect be ie. the campaign succeeds in open but fails in solo due to succeeded intercept - no effect, so nobody would bother? Is there a solution to this sort of problem that's equal to everyone?
Should the system make missions mode specific so that increased player interaction would prevail? Is that equal?
----------------
If it would work, this would have multiple positive effects on the game, inlcuding but not limited to:
Once you log in to the game world in any mode:
- You can set your status alone, or as a team, to be of service as a free agent to various BGS factions and/or Powerplay powers.
- You'd get a real time, updating list of jobs that become available via, for example, a new tab in the top-left monitor. These missions would be generated via BGS and PowerPlay events, be longer and more difficult than normal mission board missions.
- Two types of missions, campaign and interception. Campaigns are multi-phase missions spanning multiple systems. Intercept missions target on-going campaigns.
Attach PvP matchmaking for those who play in open, so that some AI enemies would be replaced by human opposition. You don't get always pitted against other players, but there's a chance you might. Much like Dark Souls invading system. People playing in solo or in private group would get a chance of AI interference.
Scaling difficulty
Apply different threat levels to indicate the chance of interference for campaign type missions. This way people playing in open would have a chance to choose from a very likely confrontations with other players, to campaigns with only a small chance of it happening. In case of solo/private group, you'd only get AI opposition. Failing or succeeding in mid-mission campaign objectives could of course alter the threat level to keep things interesting. Of course, determining how much AI opposition does a single human player take away from the mission would require fine tuning over time.
Intercepting
The party about to be working against you would see a mission pop up in your choise of delivery system, and depending on the status of the on-going mission they're about to intercept, they'd get a fitting description: Contract was accepted or is ongoing, intercept to [neutralize] [steal] [steal and take over mission] [scan] [get there first] [etc]. Tracking device was planted on a piece of data, package or a ship. Whatever. The overarching theme always being that the intercepting party gets the either the real-time or updated location of the mission runner, or a place they're going to be in so they can set an ambush for lethal or non-lethal objective completion.
Variety
Apply objectives to campaigns that encourage different team compositions and ships and a variety of space, SRV and on-foot objectives.
Example 1) Download from dataport in settlement A, upload it to network in settlement B, wait until results become available and download them, and deliver the acquired data to point C. Varied distances between objectives to adjust mission times. Trickle in some procedurally generated, BGS state affected reasons to linger in supercruise, normal space or planet surface doing varied objectives to keep things surprising and fresh and the participants in edge of their seats and adjusting.
Example 2) Space installations have hallways that only small ships can fit in, some of them have places you can only enter with recon or hatch breaker limpets. Downloading and uploading data or dropping cargo in these places would encourage small ship gameplay.
Example 3) Cargo transport missions could encourage teams to fly convoys of ships consisting of transport vessels and protection with either artificial restrictions (one member of team simply must have a T7, or the mission provides you one that someone in the team must pilot for the duration of the job) or with mid-mission events and objectives requiring faster wing members or varied utility or cargo capacity.
Example 4) Solo player on open notices an intercept mission on the system. It's a job to interdict and scan a data/cargo carrying member of a three ship wing. After the interdiction success, opposing wing can either eliminate, or chase and scan the wake of the threath in limited time after escape jump to SC to lessen or negate the impact of this intercepting action. If they fail, they might get a bigger threat matchmade against them or be a constant target of AI enemies, or have to work against time for the remainder of the mission. If the solo player gets away, he will be rewarded regardless of wether his wake gets scanned upon escape.
Powerplay & BGS
The missions in both BGS and PowerPlay could be generated from the initial actions of the BGS supporters / powerplay votes and ingame player actions and trigger from a certain threshold of either fortifying, preparing, expanding or undermining in case of PP or missiong running, market actions or security actions and such in BGS, so that the missions would then be targeted against proper factions and powers and cause desired effects and faction statuses.
Have powerplay-related missions that reflect their on-going objectives like fortifying, preparing, expanding and undermining, to encourage open powerplay PvP interaction and give variety to open/solo/private players supporting their power or disrupting foreign powers. On success and depending on mission level, reward players heavily with merits and the PP faction with progress on the ongoing objectives that the mission targeted.
The whole idea is to only have certain, limited, amount of missions available. Perhaps being generated at pre-determined times of day, especially in Powerplay, so that if you would play in Open and would want to go for the highest reward and effect, you would very likely be playing against the other power's players.
Issues and open questions
For example, fortify effort triggers a powerplay campaign to generate. People in all modes are waiting keenly to get in on the action. How many campaign missions should the effort spawn? 2? 30? 50? 100? Determined by the amount of people currently active on the mission system on each mode? Should it be emergent, a daily or a weekly thing?
If on-going campaigns generate intercepting missions, a person in solo mode could grab an intercept generated by a team playing campaign in open. Would this happen so often that people would actually never be matched against each other? What would the effect be ie. the campaign succeeds in open but fails in solo due to succeeded intercept - no effect, so nobody would bother? Is there a solution to this sort of problem that's equal to everyone?
Should the system make missions mode specific so that increased player interaction would prevail? Is that equal?
----------------
If it would work, this would have multiple positive effects on the game, inlcuding but not limited to:
- Revitalizing Powerplay, without taking anything from solo/private while giving lots to the "Open Only" crowd craving some in-built, meaningful mechanics to meet your adversaries in Open.
- Healthier PvP that is not centered so much around ships that are 100% built and engineered for it, against people who are not interested in it. These jobs would require variety, and wings consisting solely from murder FDL's would not succeed in everything as smoothly - however, full on combat-only campaigns and interceptions would also be generated to cater for these sort of wings.
- Getting more variety in PvP encounters with different objectives that would result in chases through planet rings, surfaces and space installations to full on 1v1 to 4v4 PvP fights to death.
- Excitement, you never know if you've been made and someone's coming for you.
- Longer lasting and harder, raid-like co-op PvE content for solo and private group players. An option for the casual mission board jobs.
Last edited: