You gonna FAAAIIL...

Hi, I'm plotting an arc and I need a way to make one mission in it at least nearly success-proof (like I need to have my arcs even more ignored than they are now, I know, but it really IS part of the story!). Anyone got ideas? Here's what I've come up with so far:

1) A boss you fight is one tough mother so he defeats you (that does pull a "MISSION FAILED", yes?). I consider this a bit too mean, what with the debt.

2) Said boss, set near the 'front' of a small map, flees at the first punch.

3) A defendable object - I hear these almost never work out and the foes always get to it before you can stop them.

4) Some crazy to-do list like click on 37 glowies with long timers spread out over a huge map and a really short timer on the mission.

5) Uh... profit????

The whys and wherefores at this point in the arc are a bit open so I can no doubt find a way via text to make it fit, so any suggestion is good.

Thanks for listening and for pondering my question!

On a more constructive note, there's an idea I played around with for a mission that allows for the illusion of possible success, but will likely fail:

You go through the mission, there are a bunch of objectives. Completing them spawns another required objective: An EB (to guarantee that he will be at least a boss and therefore not one-shottable) at the front of the map.

The map used has to have a "front" area that consists of a single room, fairly small, with three possible boss spawn points. The EB is here. At about 1/2 health, when the player is good and distracted, the EB will spawn two more required objectives: a pair of bosses. These bosses are Illusion/Ninjitsu, with only Group Invisibility from their primary, and at least Hide and Danger Sense from their secondary. Their surrounding group is set to "Empty," and they are set to flee immediately upon seeing the player (I believe you set them to flee at Full health/1 minion remaining). Set their nav bar text to something confusing, that doesn't indicate to the player that they must defeat two more bosses. Most players won't even see them (make sure the visible EB doesn't have a defensive powerset that will encourage players to use yellow insps), they will have no attacks, so won't break their Hide, and have +perception, thereby giving a very good chance that at least one will see the player and immediately flee. Even if the player sees them, they will have to defeat two bosses with defense before they can escape, while still fighting the EB.

I never fully tested this theory to see how well it would work in practice, and of course it isn't foolproof, but there it is.

Edit: Just did a quick test, and it totally worked. I used one of the tech labs where the front room was that one with the diagonal pillars. The visible boss spawned at the front of the room, the invisible runners spawned at the back, saw me from all the way across the room, and immediately started running. I had Cloak of Darkness on (+perception) and still didn't see them (I didn't try tabbing to them though...totally didn't think of it. Got sucked in by my own diversion).

And I realized something else: it doesn't have to be the front. It can be the back, as long as it's one of those maps with a small room on the top floor and all the "back" spawn points in it. The mission will fail as soon as they hit the elevator.

You could always give success the illusion of defeat.

Write the text so that it looks like you want one thing to happen, and no matter what, the text says they failed.

For instance, have it so they MUST secure something in a safe (simple clicky). Set the safe in the back, set a boss up front, the whole time the boss is getting beat down he talks about how it’s awesome that the player is wasting all their time on him/her while their operative is at the safe now. The player gets to the safe, clicks on it…and the text says it’s “empty.”

Also, you can have the mission “fail” even if it succeeds. The player does all they are supposed to do, but the contact told them it was all for naught, because X got away, or the files they downloaded had been corrupted, etc. Heck, he could yell at them for getting the wrong files. You could even suggest it while they’re downloading the files, by having the click message be that the files are a mess and that you hope you’re getting the files X needs, and couple that with a fairly long download time (10-20 secs maybe?). Then you get back and he’s like, “What is this garbage? FAIL”

If you have a mission that actually can be failed easily (timer on defeat all mobs, etc.) then you have your mission fail text say what you want, but you can have the mission success make it sound like they failed in some way also.

Hope that helps or at least gives you some ideas.

You could have a glowie in the back of the mission tied to a boss summon near the front with the boss immediately running at 100% health.

However, you might want to rethink causing a player to automatically fail a mission. Even if you feel it's crucial to the story, it's going to cause some form of grief to the player, which will likely be reflected in your ratings, which are then further going to cause people to bypass your arc when looking for something to play.

I'd go with Wishbone's suggestion above and give the player the means to succeed gameplay-wise, but not necessarily story-wise.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nethergoat it's NEVER too late to pad your /ignore list!

A lot of good responses for me to consider here,Dr. Wishbone's "tell 'em they failed anyway" is something I'll really have to look at as yes I know that no matter how much I tell you a failed mish is at the heart of the story, someone somewhere will tell me it's stupid and I deserve a one-star for wasting their time and I'm the reason no one plays MA arcs and I kick puppies.*




*(simply not true, it's kittens)