Radio/Newspaper Missions, Flawed

(wall of text incoming, tl;dr at the bottom)

Does anyone else find radio/newspaper missions relatively boring and uninspired? Right now you simply run 3 random missions and save/rob a bank. Nothing particularly interesting about that right?

What about changing it so that these missions have more of an impact on the game? For example, right now I love picking missions that involve the Council because they're not a pain to deal with. But what if after three missions involving the Council, they realize you're out to get them? They could do a number of things, such as sending out ambushes on the streets, laying low for awhile so you can't find them, or even sending reinforcements to a subsequent mission. Suddenly there is a bit of strategy in choosing these missions, do you want to avoid making these enemies too angry or do you want to provoke them to get more kills?

Or on a deeper level, what if stuff you retrieve in some of these missions carry over. Say, you get the Liquid Computer from the Outcasts. That's it, mission over, didn't make one bit of difference. What if it continued from there? You could have to deliver the computer to Dr. Smythe, while being ambushed along the way by angry Outcasts. Or the delivery could be an instanced mission, delivering it to a Longbow or Wyvern operative. With Going Rogue there could even be a Vigilante/Rogue possibility of selling it to the highest bidder among groups such as Malta, the 5th Column, or the Council.

tl;dr, Radio missions could potentially more interesting by making them impactful, be it making enemy groups angrier at you or allowing you to make choices as to what to do with retrieved goods.

I think that Newspaper/Radio missions are supposed to be quick 'I wanna punch someone in the face without having to think about it' missions that you can jump into. I can see where you're coming from, but I think simplicity is needed somewhere in the game for those who just wanna log in, grab a PuG, and get to earning the experience. Radios do that, and I think it works. In fact, I'd love for the devs to streamline this experience further by having the detectives give out their phone number. When in one of these 'let's go!' teams, I find that having to see to the detective can actually be quite an interruption at the early levels.

I generally stick to story content. I too am left unsatisfied when it's radio-simple.

Alot of the Contact storylines are Great and fun to play. The Radio Missions are the quick things.

Much like Spiderman web slinging and sees a bank being robbed he comes in beat the thugs and swings away.

For the Major "Save the world" Storys there are the Task Forces and Story Arcs.

I think there is room for something more team friendly that is less filler content than a radios. Mission arcs are almost kind of like, "Your team could do this if you just really want to, but I'm going to annoy the heck out of you by making you run all over the world pointlessly. Why don't you just go do that nice radio mission instead? And by the way, only the mission owner will have any idea what's going on or earn special rewards unless all team members sync up their missions exactly. Really. Just do the radio."

Some of the newer missions are better designed but to anyone who mostly PUGs radios do get really tired after a period of time, and mission arcs are just a PITA for all the running around they make you do just to go talk to (read: click on) random NPCs.

My only problem with radio/paper missions is that its highly likely some players do not realise that there are story arcs.

I think the devs should review the old arcs and bring the travelling into line. They should then also give everyone all the contacts a zone has to offer the first time they arrive there.

Why?

I have a few characters who at level 5, joined a radio team and then quickly became level 14. Then having to go back and bring all your contacts up to date is a real time waster.

Oh, and they can get rid of the "Kill 10 CoT in Perez Park" missions, something my level 7 Defender wondered why bother with.

You know,

I don't care what the devs say about 'preserving' content. A lot of those old blueside story arcs are amazingly long, boring, repetitive and stupid. They need to be removed and replaced by stuff that is fun.

Kill-alls on huge, multilevel lab maps are not cool. The blue water room in Council bases with a kill all objective is NOT cool.

A lot of the old content arcs deserve 2 - 3 missions at MOST and none of them need to be kill-alls. Either they need revamping, or they need to go.

Tie contacts to story arcs and keep the arcs in a specific zone. It makes better sense and keeps the time wasting to a minimum.

Most of the old blueside arcs have some good story...but insanely dumb missions tied to them where nothing of consequence happens. It's just whack a mob until you get sick of it. Do you really want new players coming across these 'gems' and judging your game by them?