Dev's Please please Let us abandon missions
By
airy_,
Posted on: 2004-09-18 02:51 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
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Dropping missions is a good idea. We'll get around to it. Much like a Mission Difficulty slider, it's a "sooner rather than later" feature.
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Now that's funny, when this was discussed in beta, states thought it was a bad idea and unheroic. 
I'm glad he changed his mind.
The problem was in a bad design assumption. When the devs designed the missions (and I realize it might be hypocritical of me to be "assuming" this, but I thin it's fairly clear), they designed them under the assumption that players would be willing to play for 2-3 hours at a time, minimum, and would never be irresponsible enough to accept missions unless they had that much time to burn.
Further, they assumed that players would want realism (as in missions with limited advanced intel that require you to complete them within a reasonable amount of time), rather than pure convenience (as in a generous amount of advanced warning to possible negative features, and the option to complete a mission days, weeks, or even months after accepting it, or discarding it if you choose to, regardless of how irresponsible it would be if Spiderman abandoned a task that was beneath him).
Players aren't like that. Well, many roleplayers are, but they can roleplay those constraints themselves without any gameplay systems to enforce their compliance. The non-roleplayers (or loose roleplayers, would prefer a system that is more open and fun oriented.
If you hate Perez park, then you should never have to take a mission into Perez Park, and yet you should always have plenty of other mission available. If you love Perez Park then you should be able to take missions almost exclusively in Perez Park (within its level range). If you hate timed missions, for whatever reason, then you should never have to accept one.
If you don't feel like ping-ponging all over town from contact to to mission to contact then you should be able to collect numerous missions at the begining of a session, and go from mission to mission for the rest of the night. If you want the "realism" of returning to your contacts after each mission then you can easilly do that on your own.
The real trick here is assumptions. When designing the mission system, they should make these assumptions:
1. A player has only 30 minutes to play, 60 minutes at the most. Make no assumptions about them having more. If they have more, great, they can obviously do more with it, but you can't assume that.
2. A Player is playing the game solo. He does not want, and should not need, other players to group with him at any time to accomplish missions HE is assigned. If he wants missions that are too challenging to solo, then he can do so through TF missions and through the natural scaling of solo missions, but no mission accepted from a normal contact should place the player in a zone too dangerous for him to travel through, or give him objectives that he cannot reasonably complete alone.
3. A Player wants to be on door missions for his entire career, from level 1 to level 50, without any "outdoors" leveling (this is obviously not true for all players, but by working with this assumption you catch those players as well, since they will always have plenty to do, or choose not to do).
4. A Player wants to spend as little time traveling between contacts and missions as possible. Design the system to eliminate as much of this wasted time as possible, and leave it up to the player to take advantage of those features or to avoid them.
5. A Player has a most favorite zone, and a least favorite zone. Allow them to guide their progress towards and away from them respectively.
6. A Player has a most favorite enemy type, and a least favorite enemy type. Allow them to guide their progress towards and away from them respectively.
Remember, the players are not JUST the heroes they're piloting, they are also the writers of their character's destinies (that's the reasoning behind the Inspirations at least), so give them as much creative control as is feasible.
I'd like to see you able to do three things with missions:
1) complete them, as we do now.
2) discard them, so they are gone for good.
3) postpone them, give them back to the contact with a "I'll get back to you on that"
Also, while I'm thinking of it, I know you can fail missions, like the cape one, but what I would like to see, is missions with a split storyline.
Say for example, you get to a point where you can save the girl or go chasing after the bad guy (choice of missions) but can't do both as the same time.
Excellent points, well thought-out and presented.
The only thing I would add is that every once in a while a player should be forced to go into a zone/do a mission type he hates. Not all the time, just now and again. You don't appreciate the good stuff if you don't have bad stuff to compare it to.
The Alt Alphabet ~ OPC: Other People's Characters ~ Terrific Screenshots of Cool ~ Superhero Fiction
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I'd like to see you able to do three things with missions:
1) complete them, as we do now.
2) discard them, so they are gone for good.
3) postpone them, give them back to the contact with a "I'll get back to you on that"
Also, while I'm thinking of it, I know you can fail missions, like the cape one, but what I would like to see, is missions with a split storyline.
Say for example, you get to a point where you can save the girl or go chasing after the bad guy (choice of missions) but can't do both as the same time.
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I like that. Or perhaps "pursue Villain A or Villain B" so you won't feel bad about leaving a victim in the lurch. Whichever bad guy you chase gives you an entriely different set of missions, so that when you roll another character you can choose to chase the other guy, opening up new content for you. Enhances replayability.
The Alt Alphabet ~ OPC: Other People's Characters ~ Terrific Screenshots of Cool ~ Superhero Fiction
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Now that's funny, when this was discussed in beta, states thought it was a bad idea and unheroic.
I'm glad he changed his mind.
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Reality has a way of catching up with you. They've changed (or plan to change) a LOT of things we said needed changing in beta and they insisted (then) were fine as is. A short list:
1. "We need a social area. Fighting crime is all well and good but even heroes need down time." Their initial answer -- "You're playing a hero. You sould go out and fight crime. And besides nobody uses social areas in other MMOs anyway." However, after seeing the train stations turn into the default social hangouts (and causing lag for people trying to use the train), they realized that the beta-testers were right and put those in.
2. "You need to be able to re-spec." The initial answer was "No that can be abused." But now they have put that into the game as well.
3. "You need a mission difficulty slider. Some builds can do things others can't and this makes missions impossible." Their original answer: "Get a group. Sliders are too exploitable." Their current answer is they have made putting this in a priority.
4. "We should be able to have secret identities." Their initial answer: "Your'e a hero 24/7. No secret ID needed." The current answer is that you have 4 costume choices (ultimately) one or more of which can be "secret ID" looking. Not *quite* the same (since a secret ID would also include a name change) but satisfactory to most people who wanted one.
5. "You need to be able to abort bugged or impossible missions." Initial answer: "Too easy to exploit." Current answer is they are looking into it and planning on allowing it.
This brings up a fun point... if the devs had just listened to the beta testers in the first place all of these situations could have been avoided from the get-go. These were not (unless the devs were lying when they gave us their reasons) due to lack of time before release, but rather, due to a set of flawed assumptions about what players would want (or in some cases, need, such as how to deal themselves with bugged missions).
It also brings up the moral to this story: you can't force players to have fun YOUR way. They either will have fun THEIR way, or they won't play.
For the future, I hope the devs of this game realize that they shouldn't be doing things like opening up beta and then almost immediately announcing, "We are in feature freeze; stop asking for new features." The whole POINT of beta should be not to just shakedown the game for bugs but also to figure out what the players want or need that never occurred to you or your alpha testers. Maybe we will have learned some things for City of Villains next year, hmmm? I hope so.
F
I agree dropping missions is a good idea, the bugged ones that you can't finish (i.e. wheres that last lame mob) are really frustrating.
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OMG I cant wait to drop any mission with an AV in it!!!!
Those wouldnt be so bad if you could could have more than 3 missions, but when you see your numbers of possible missions slot one by 1 drop because there is an AV in them it becomes painful.
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Same here, I have one mission with an AV in it and another mission that's defeat 45 Carnies in PI! WTF?! I'm level 40 so I cautiously sought out Carnies in PI, the lowest I could find where 41's. That's cool in small groups ike the first two minion 41 group I took care of. The next was like 43 (impossible for me so skipped it). The last group was 41's, a whole mixed bag Boss, LT's Minions. It was going good until I got held, my toggles dropped and the Phantasm along with the strongman put me away. After another hour of flying around PI looking for Carnies I gave up, I don't mind being defeated but I couldn't even find any!!!
Who do I have to *&^% around here to get more Targeted AoE recipes added?
Arc Name: Tsoo In Love
Arc ID: 413575
/agree. I've posted this before. Others have as well. Don't get why you can't do this.
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Dropping missions is a good idea. We'll get around to it. Much like a Mission Difficulty slider, it's a "sooner rather than later" feature.
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I like this idea too. But it looks like its going to be a "later rather than sooner" feature. Unless you consider half a year to be soon. Im guessing this is on the back burner for issue 5?
My Pre-Order Coh box.
My character in coh beta.
My character in a coh beta mission.
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This is to suggest that the Devs gives us the ability to abandon a mission if we need to. I have been playing for two days now and I can get rid of this one mission. It is bugged and I can't finish it. I don't care if I don't get the mission xp bonus, and I have petitioned a GM and waited and waited. The last time over 2 and a half hours. I just want to clear the mission from my Missions.
Does anyone else think this is a good idea?
Marcus
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YES!!!!!!!!!! 
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This is to suggest that the Devs gives us the ability to abandon a mission if we need to. I have been playing for two days now and I can get rid of this one mission. It is bugged and I can't finish it. I don't care if I don't get the mission xp bonus, and I have petitioned a GM and waited and waited. The last time over 2 and a half hours. I just want to clear the mission from my Missions.
Does anyone else think this is a good idea?
Marcus
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YES!!!!!!!!!!
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You do realize that we've been able to drop missions for several Issues now ? This is just another old, obsolete thread you've necroed.
Arc #40529 : The Furies of the Earth
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This is to suggest that the Devs gives us the ability to abandon a mission if we need to. I have been playing for two days now and I can get rid of this one mission. It is bugged and I can't finish it. I don't care if I don't get the mission xp bonus, and I have petitioned a GM and waited and waited. The last time over 2 and a half hours. I just want to clear the mission from my Missions.
Does anyone else think this is a good idea?
Marcus
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YES!!!!!!!!!!
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You do realize that we've been able to drop missions for several Issues now ? This is just another old, obsolete thread you've necroed.
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YES!!!!!!!!!!!!
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I agree, but would also like a better accepting process. A few times I have grabbed a mission either not realizing it is timed, or not realizing that it is too much for me at the moment (since the actual objective isn't spelled out).
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What's worse is that you go on a normal mission... it's done, you exit. Then suddenly... @&*^$&# timed mission!! It's a follow up to the mission you just did.
I absolutely, positively, vehemently HATE these surprise timed missions. Especially when I have like maybe 30 mins to play and I thought I'd do a mission and log for the night.. and THEN this timed one pops up...