Mission descriptions


Col_Blitzkrieger

 

Posted

Well, I might go out on a limb here but - for the love of god folks, don't try to write the long as a chapter of a Dostojevski book. I do know this is somewhat a matter of taste, but I must say a well put, informational and short briefing makes me turn up the end rating one notch allmost automatically. Even for a farm mission. <- That's a half-*** joke. But I most often can't get myself to read long windling descriptions ... I JUUUUST CAAAN'T!

(It's meant as a ground for some discussion, not a "I know what's best for you"-thread. I'm not a socialist you know... <-another joke combined with risk of troll-challenge.)


 

Posted

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don't try to write the long as a chapter of a Dostojevski book

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I'm not quite sure what you mean. Are you referring to the text uttered by the contact prior to each mission?


 

Posted

I accept your troll challenge!

Personally I'd rather please all the people out there looking for a good story than just you and other people who can't be bothered to read.

IMHO the whole point of the MA is to write stories. If I wanted to simply kill stuff I'd go find some Skulz in Perez.


 

Posted

Moon_Angel; yes.

Sojourn; you need to go stand under GC and tell your stories instead. (Sorry - that is un-called for, but I'm in a bit provocative mode now... )


 

Posted

I like a decent description, it lets you know what's going on and gives you the impression that the author has at least put some thought into the arc.

One of my arcs has some fairly long descriptions but I highlighted the key bits in orange text for the people who don't like reading - not that anyone's bothered anyway


 

Posted

[ QUOTE ]
(Sorry - that is un-called for, but I'm in a bit provocative mode now... )

[/ QUOTE ]

Really? I never would have guessed


 

Posted

Ah, ok. Thanks for clarifying, Major.

Personally I lean more towards Sojourn's view. I think I have reached the character/word limit in many of the mission descriptions on my two arcs.

Each to their own of course but I like the story-telling aspect and my favourite arcs in the game are the ones which have interesting and involved stories, such as the awesomeness that is Ubelmann the Unknown.


 

Posted

A mission dialogue should be the right length. Sometimes that's short, sometimes that's long. The right length depends on the pacing of the story, the complexity of the plot and the voice of the character.

That said, when a long mission dialogue is called for, never forget the three golden rules: paragraphs, paragraphs, paragraphs.

When the text is threatening to overwhelm you, remember that punctuation, whitespace and formatting can go a long way towards making a long piece of text read as if it was short.

Or maybe you should just cut away half of it: "Arrakis teaches the attitude of the knife -- chopping off what's incomplete and saying: 'Now, it's compete because it's ended here.'"


 

Posted

There is fluff and then there is rightful information. A mission might tell you what you need to know and achieve, adding the why it happened.

That said I haven't really noticed (yet) stories with too much wording. On the contrary, too less is a rule.

If you (OP) don't like verbose text introductions what is the problem? Skip it and click on Accept, once inside you'll have a nav bar pointing to the objectives anyway.

Insta TL;DR.


 

Posted

Dude, you'd hate my arc, It's awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwll about the text wall... I mean story


 

Posted

I use orange highlights for the important stuff, normal white text for the fluff. Best of both worlds, just read the orange bits.