Seems reasonable. It's also reasonable to give a small amount of intro text prior to the contact's initial dialog (in a different color, or otherwise marked as "not speech") - I've seen that used effectively.
There's a certain amount of general acceptance when approaching an MA mission that you have to "roll with it" just to get started. I wouldn't sweat it too much unless you end up placing the player in very specific emotional circumstances.
You do of course need to have some kind of "hook" for the arc so that the player is actually interested in running it - if you meet that criteria, the player will surely mentally justify that their character is also interested.
And for a while things were cold,
They were scared down in their holes
The forest that once was green
Was colored black by those killing machines
I ran into a sort of similar problem after plunking in a contact - there's no "ask about this contact" option to click on and get the write-up bio. I might as well have left it blank.
I'd really like to get that and a space for intro text.
Taking a quick look at what was new in the Test server yesterday, it looks like we'll be getting a space to put your contact's "faction" and information, presumably that players will see when they "Ask about this contact." When I tested the mission though, I still didn't get that menu option; I'm sure that's something that will happen by the time I15 goes live, however.
A mission I'm working on has the "introduction" problem as well. At the moment, I'm sort of having the dialogue imply that the contact is already a known friend or acquaintance of the player. I'm not sure how well that will go over, however.
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Taking a quick look at what was new in the Test server yesterday, it looks like we'll be getting a space to put your contact's "faction" and information, presumably that players will see when they "Ask about this contact." When I tested the mission though, I still didn't get that menu option; I'm sure that's something that will happen by the time I15 goes live, however.
A mission I'm working on has the "introduction" problem as well. At the moment, I'm sort of having the dialogue imply that the contact is already a known friend or acquaintance of the player. I'm not sure how well that will go over, however.
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Oh, good news! I hope they get that feature working.
As for your contact being an "known friend" - that will annoy some and others won't care. As usual, do what you feel is right and makes you happy with your arc.
For the moment, I've more of less been leaving it up to the players imagination about how they encountered my contacts. At least that way no RPers will feel how they met the contact was out of character.
One of my contacts is a time traveler who already knows you (even though you don't know him yet), so his first line is "Thank God I found you!" and it goes right into the story from there.
That seemed to be a nice balance between finding out who he is and getting into the story right away.
In another arc, the contact is a stack of your old comic books, but that's a little different.
I think a little explanation is nice, but I prefer to get into the story as quickly as possible. It sounds like you've got the right idea, though I'd have to play your arc myself to be sure. A little explanation is great, but too much just turns into a wall of text that can pull someone right out of the game.
This was something that came up when I was fixing up my arc, and I was curious to hear how the issue was viewed by other MAers.
My arc is story/RP-driven, based on the way that normal in-game arcs are currently handled, and I've used one of my toons as the contact. However, when it came time to write up the intro text and mission search text, I kinda ran into a problem. I didn't really know how to articulate just how the player came to find my contact, or why they would be interested in starting up the arc.
So, I made my mission search text into a "broadcast" by my contact, asking for help and giving a bit of a summary of the arc the player would be starting, then starting the intro text with her greeting the player as if they've "heard" her broadcast and contacted her.
Am I being insanely weird about this, or has anyone else had this issue come up when it came to their arcs? Is this something viable, or am I being too much of an RP dork about it?
Current Scrapper Projects: Elec/Invuln, Fire/SR and the eternal MA/DA adventure
Current Defender Projects: Emp/Psy and Storm/Arch
lol Stalker: Nin/Nrg