open missions

often in comics, heroes and villains come across odd situations that they have to deal with on the fly, bizarre scenarios that they attempt to either make right, ir tip to their own advantage.

enter open missions, doors in locations that beg questions, that lead into one-time missions that seek to answer said questions (what are those three boats doing out in Talos Island's harbor? what is the natural cavern in the southwest corner of brickstown? where do the portals in pocket D go? who is currently i the former Paragon Dance party? why does that store have an "open" sign, but with all the lights out? that's a nice bank over there...)

essentially I'm pushing for more proactive heroism and villainy, stuff that isn't hand fed to you by contacts, 1 mission at a time. It seems too often that we're nothing but powered flunkies who do the punching rather than any of the thinking, and while that may be fine for your Hulk types out there, I generally play heroes who think thingss through.

feedback? suggestions?

Good idea!

I like it.

Brilliant. I'd actually do a lot more just-for-the-hell-of-it exploring if there was something like this in play.

Actually, I'd probably play a lot more in general. The whole thing with being a lackey to the contacts has gotten so old I haven't been playing much for a while now and would love a good reason to get devoted (read: obsessed) again. The radio/paper missions are no different from the contacts, really. You just get a choice.

The ability to actually go looking for trouble and finding it... Very drool-worthy to me.

Mega-/signed.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Techbot Alpha ...I have the patience of a coffee-fueled flea...

Considering the direction of CoH is going towards 'Content' after Going Rogue, it would be a great chance to implement this idea. I'd love to combine exploring with missions. I have been curious of some places that exist in the game, particularly the resturants and supermarkets, what lies within the donut shop in Faultline? Maybe this suggestion will tell us what.

/signed

Cops

Quote:

Originally Posted by Techbot Alpha ...I have the patience of a coffee-fueled flea...

a way to prvide cues as to whether a door leads to something is to have enemies either entering or leaving a building (something I'm not entirely sure about is whether these would be separate instances or just rooms of the zone, like shops.)

say you're in steel canyon, checking in with your contacts, when you suddenly see an alleyway door open , and a column of council slips out, looking furtive, before starting to run east. curious, you follow them, waiting for them to drop below the building where you perch before dropping down and beating them soundly. when pressed for informaion one of them says that they planted a bomb in the building, and were just part of a courier party to alert the local base. this marks the door on your map, and gives you the mission "Defeat all council in Office, defuse bombs," with a possible follow up of "infiltrate council base"

you ALSO could have just entered the map, at which point you would have found council swarming the place, along with a number of bombs, but you wouldn't have been aware of the council base. this is a sort of branching open mission, bu something simpler would just be to see, say, a troupe f carnies entering a warehouse and investigating.

This would make this a whole new game. The possibilities are completely endless. I absolutely love this basic idea.

After a fashion it's akin to automatic access to the paper missions; you don't have to actually go into the paper/radio to get the mission but instead just happen upon suspicious behavior. You know, even though I have no reason to believe this will ever happen I'm still excited by the possibility.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Techbot Alpha ...I have the patience of a coffee-fueled flea...

i glad it's being recieved so well. does anyone know how hard this would be to code?

another question: should he missions be at set levels, orshould they adjust to you like normal missions? on the one hand, the prior would give definite places where heroes could use backup rather than just wanting to team, on the other hand, whole zones ofthis sort of content would be rendered useless.

This is an awesome idea! It would be so great to be running towards a mish, but on the way there you see a Hellion running into a grocery store, and if you followed him you'd find that the store is being robbed and you get the objectives to save it!
I think that they should snap to your level, as that way a level fifty could just run around in, say, Atlas Park and stop some baddies.

/Do want
I like the idea. Someone mentioned making it like Mayhem/Safeguard side missions? I really like the sound of that.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zwillinger GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

/signed

I'm seeing more and more suggestions that boil down to one thing... a more "random" environment which I've said repeatedly this game needs... let's hope the devs are paying attention.

fingers crossed, rab.