Interesting tidbit: Villains need to complete several arcs to unlock the Recluse SF. Would be nifty if for parity's sake you'd need to complete this Arc to unlock Statesman. But that's just my spiteful side talking.
Personally, I could go for that. Put States in a locked room (where he should be anyway 
) and only allow access if you have completed A Hero's Hero. Easier to implement than a rewrite as well.
Disclaimer: The above may be humerous, or at least may be an attempt at humour. Try reading it that way.
Posts are OOC unless noted to be IC, or in an IC thread.
I remember a PuG where we were checking out the new Faultline arcs when we picked up the Save Doc Delilah mission.
Flying out over the pits, one of our number swoops down to where shes stood as a contact and proudly declares that hes found her. Always struck me as a bit of a daft set up especially as the route to the mission often takes you right past her.
@Dante EU - Union Roleplayer and Altisis Victim
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I remember a PuG where we were checking out the new Faultline arcs when we picked up the ‘Save Doc Delilah’ mission.
Flying out over the pits, one of our number swoops down to where she’s stood as a contact and proudly declares that he’s found her. Always struck me as a bit of a daft set up especially as the route to the mission often takes you right past her.
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This is why MMO stories are so awkward to vary. It's a real shame that the olde everquest style static world still hasn't been completely kicked in the teeth.
I can't wait to see a game that gets this mechanic to be more flexible. Sadly, it's a lot of work for just a cosmetic change, but IMO it's got a large immersion factor.
Please fight My Brute: http://2hero.mybrute.com
Mission Architect 54161 - Michael Mundano, Megan Malloney and the Secret Senate.
Mission Architect 91838 - Constantinople Jones' Family Secret. A One Mission Story arc.
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The whole time, your contact is telling you he has not been seen in ages and the city needs him. And all this time he's standing on a ship in Indy Port handing out his TF. It's the only arc I know of in the game with this kind of huge incongruity. It would be really nice if they could rewrite the arc a bit so it actually fits in with current history.
What would be really cool was if he was made a client-side object and he actually vanished off his ship at the start of the arc, with Maria (the contact) telling you he has vanished. That would require minimal arc rewriting, but may involve some technology updates. Otherwise, States needs to be written out of the arc.
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CoH-side, in Faultline, Jim Temblor (Faultline, both by name and location) and Penelope Yin both show up in RWZ missions (on arcs/LGTF) - so it's not just Doc Delilah. And CoV-side the Arachnos patrons show up in the patron arcs, yet don't vanish from Grandville - just as well really, as that would really hack off other players who need the patrons for their next mission
The only way to prevent stuff like this would be to stop contacts/trainers from EVER appearing in missions or vice-versa, but that would be rather dull as often they're some of the key/signature characters in the game's lore/storyline.
I'm fine with it personally - it doesn't bend my in-game immersion any more than most contacts not having moved an inch in 4 years - don't they ever need the toilet? 
Though, like Hero2, I long for the day when we can have truly dynamic MMO worlds, with missions that you either generate yourself (in-game aims) or get inflicted upon you by passing NPCs, and NPCs who follow their own imitation of daily lives instead of standing on street corners waiting for us to click them.
EQ2 is probably the closest any MMO I've played has come to having some decent NPC movement in its cities - sometimes you'd even have to go looking around for a quest/contact NPC because they'd moved - although of course some players moaned about that on the forums as they couldn't find the NPC they wanted, despite the "ask a Guard" feature (where any city guard would point out an NPC's location if they were close enough to that guard) - but EQ2 still had too many static NPCs for my liking.
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This is why MMO stories are so awkward to vary. It's a real shame that the olde everquest style static world still hasn't been completely kicked in the teeth.
I can't wait to see a game that gets this mechanic to be more flexible. Sadly, it's a lot of work for just a cosmetic change, but IMO it's got a large immersion factor.
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It is just bad writing. A deacent writer should be able to make the stories just as compelling with out us having to save/beat up the Freedom Phalanx (or other contacts), and save the world on a daily biases.
That, and a segment of the player base have been accustomed to being put up on a pedestal (story wise) from their single player CRPG experience. (I call it "the chosen one syndrome)
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The only way to prevent stuff like this would be to stop contacts/trainers from EVER appearing in missions or vice-versa
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Nope. Every played WoW? It has both the worst possible way of handling this and the best.
On the bad side, there are missions which result in you, for example, escourting the quest giver somewhere. While you are doing this, the NPC is gone from his usualy spot and no one else can do the quest. Dumbest game mechanic I've seen in a while I do not recommend this to any game designer.
OTOH, most NPCs are animated client-side. NPCs always turn to face you when they speak to you. They turn to face you, even if three other people are talking to them at the same time because their animation is purely in the client.
Taking that mechanism, you set things up so that when you are doing a mission where X is supposed to be kidnapped, flying over X's usual spot wil, indeed, show them missing, but for everyone else they are still there and can be talked to.
(I did suggest that further up the thread, but not in as much detail.)
Disclaimer: The above may be humerous, or at least may be an attempt at humour. Try reading it that way.
Posts are OOC unless noted to be IC, or in an IC thread.
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What would be really cool was if he was made a client-side object and he actually vanished off his ship at the start of the arc, with Maria (the contact) telling you he has vanished. That would require minimal arc rewriting, but may involve some technology updates. Otherwise, States needs to be written out of the arc.
[/ QUOTE ]Would be lovely when you've scheduled a STF run for the next day and happen to get assigned the arc when running a few missions.
Personally, I'd rather sacrifice a slight bit of immersion for convenience in this case.
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I'm fine with it personally - it doesn't bend my in-game immersion any more than most contacts not having moved an inch in 4 years - don't they ever need the toilet?
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Lol at the idea of going to see a contact and just finding a floating speach bubble with the 6 letters 'Brb Bio' 
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Would be lovely when you've scheduled a STF run for the next day and happen to get assigned the arc when running a few missions.
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Fine. Back to just tidying up the mission so it actually makes any sense and you don't think Maria Jenkins has just lost it.
Disclaimer: The above may be humerous, or at least may be an attempt at humour. Try reading it that way.
Posts are OOC unless noted to be IC, or in an IC thread.
I did this recently. Well, my excuse is that they hadn't added those little coloured books to the contacts so I didn't realise how many story arcs I had open. I've been going through clearing them and up popped A Hero's Hero.
If you don't want to know what happens, stop reading now.
Okay, now that they've gone. A Hero's Hero stems from the days before the Statesman Task Force when Paragon City's staunchest defender, winner of the broom-up-butt award for 70 years in a row, Statesman, was locked away in a dungeon on the Praetorian homeworld by his evil twin Tyrant. You have to rescue him.
The whole time, your contact is telling you he has not been seen in ages and the city needs him. And all this time he's standing on a ship in Indy Port handing out his TF. It's the only arc I know of in the game with this kind of huge incongruity. It would be really nice if they could rewrite the arc a bit so it actually fits in with current history.
What would be really cool was if he was made a client-side object and he actually vanished off his ship at the start of the arc, with Maria (the contact) telling you he has vanished. That would require minimal arc rewriting, but may involve some technology updates. Otherwise, States needs to be written out of the arc.
Disclaimer: The above may be humerous, or at least may be an attempt at humour. Try reading it that way.
Posts are OOC unless noted to be IC, or in an IC thread.