Storyline Missions

[Bargib]

I love ED. I love the freedom and I love the way the ground is laid out in the main game mechanics.

But I really miss some more immersion. WoW had great story-missions bringing you forward, rewarding you with special items and other things. Right now the missions in ED are very generic and "one-off", eg. do "this", and you get "that".

And the variations on both "this" and "that" are very limited. I would love to meet a contact at a station, do some special missions, and getting some small rewards, and then after finishing the strand of missions - get a special item like an overcharged burst laser or such...

Especially maybe introducing more of the characters from the novels, and adding them to the universe would make it more believable and immersive, instead of feeling like a universe populated by robots (except the occasional player interaction).

WoW did this excellently, and should be an inspiration on how to make fun, exciting missions with the game mechanics. Yes, it could be as an expansion, but I think the core game needs maybe 20-30 handcrafted strands of missions for us to discover.

Hope to see this developed soon... )

 

[Vidmaster]

Exactly, a single player offline game with some cool story missions inside a sandbox, like Elite! Oh wait...

 

[Defacto]

I think adding ''quest characters'' is the perfect way to enforce the feeling of a universe populated by robots. Handcrafted missions: the perfect way to waste manhours on things people will only do once.

FD are going to add persistent NPC's, a revamped mission system and more life in general. I think generation is the right way, not handcrafting. However, it needs to be a good kind of generation that reacts to the environment and makes the player feel like they're actually doing tasks for something or someone with an agenda.

 

[Ericksson]

No, online, not offline.

 

[FrankusSupremus]

I like the idea of having "mini-plots" that chain activities together for whatever reason, and have specific rewards as well as just money at the end. Nothing that needs to change the entire galaxy. Perhaps you need to locate a missing person, then rescue them, and kill their kidnapper. And a month later, that person reveals that they were rich and reward you with some interesting item for your boat. Something that gives the idea that NPCs are "people" in a sense and not just pirate/bounty fodder.

 

[Defacto]

I like the idea of having "mini-plots" that chain activities together for whatever reason, and have specific rewards as well as just money at the end. Nothing that needs to change the entire galaxy. Perhaps you need to locate a missing person, then rescue them, and kill their kidnapper. And a month later, that person reveals that they were rich and reward you with some interesting item for your boat. Something that gives the idea that NPCs are "people" in a sense and not just pirate/bounty fodder.

I actually think it would be great if we had some kind of ''mail'' occasionally notifying us that we somewhat changed the world, in however small a manner. It could be the kidnapped person you rescued just mailing you a few days later, telling you that everything's all right and that they're back with their family, or the slaves you freed three weeks ago mailing you and telling you how they're doing, or the quartermaster of that backwater outpost you delivered medicines to yesterday, thanking you for what you've done.

Almost like how it worked in Mass Effect. I think that this is a really simple way to slightly increase the connection the player has with the world and the NPC's.
In some cases, it might also include further mission offers.

 

[Stocker]

A few people think that is what "power play" is going to be. The DDA has the NPC's set in factions so not just do you take missions for a faction. but also support a person of that faction. So if you don't like the tier 1 npc. But like tier 2 npc, you do tier 2's missions and over through a president.

 

[FrankusSupremus]

A mail system of some sort would be great, having all kinds of messages would be a fun little thing to do at stations.

 

[sic]

Freelancer has a good storyline..

For ed, I think we need chain of mission that takes player to places..

Like sending players to fed, imp or alliance spaces.. tell them to do stuff, gather stuff, or even kill some npc.. then send us to explore or to meet a npc or to scoop some cargo etc...

 

[VATrevelyan]

Does anyone remember how the storyline missions worked in FFE? That's the only Elite/Frontier style game with a plot, so the methods they employed there could be reused to a degree in the current game.

 

[Cosmo]

Better missions and a Codex. Currently players cannot read up about the factions, important characters or history of Elite in-game.

 

[SirAdelaide]

Handcrafted missions: the perfect way to waste manhours on things people will only do once.

I'd disagree. Sure, some people might try to rush though all the missions and then be back to the current generated game in 2 days. But for most people, 30 hours of crafted missions will take a month, or much longer given that they'll be spread around the galaxy and we'll do other things in between. If since release (2 months) we'd all been playing a game with crafted missions, consequences, and memorable characters to meet, there would be more praise and less complaints of boredom. I only played Skyrim and Fallout missions once, and their writing certainly wasn't a waste of manhours.

 

[Defacto]

I'd disagree. Sure, some people might try to rush though all the missions and then be back to the current generated game in 2 days. But for most people, 30 hours of crafted missions will take a month, or much longer given that they'll be spread around the galaxy and we'll do other things in between. If since release (2 months) we'd all been playing a game with crafted missions, consequences, and memorable characters to meet, there would be more praise and less complaints of boredom. I only played Skyrim and Fallout missions once, and their writing certainly wasn't a waste of manhours.

Missions that are crafted: All missions are crafted, but not necessarily handcrafted.
consequnces and memorable characters: As I see it, this is the goal for the non-handcrafted mission system. You don't need handcrafted missions to have consequences and memorable characters. Quite the opposite: I don't remember the name of any character in Skyrim. Well, except that Balgruf guy, but I would never forget about Cacame Awemedinade.