Umm I think number 2 is already done. At least in Praetoria it is.
1. /signed
2. /signed. And how about cell phones for the dang detectives.
3. /unsigned. I like having the freedom to work on story-arcs in the order I want to do them.
4. /signed.
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That's what he's getting at. Praetoria's done an incredibly good job with it's contacts, story arcs, missions, etc. They referenced this in point 1. The tech needs to make it's way to at least blueside first.|
Originally Posted by Dark Lost
Umm I think number 2 is already done. At least in Praetoria it is.
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And on that note, I support a revamp of the old story arcs very much, but another huge gripe I've always had is we need better starting contacts for blueside. Imagine being a new player, rolling up your first character ever and taking in the scenery of Atlas Park. You get to see the awesome statue, you're right in front of City Hall, and you see so many superheroes all around you. You're just on a comic book high. Then you go meet your first contact and they are...a random citizen in drab looking clothing. Or just some random scientist. Even Azuria just looks plain.
The starting contacts need an extreme revamp to at least make them stand out and look like they're actually somebody in a superhero comic book world. The game severely goes downhill at this point, forcing you to work for so many random citizens that appear incredibly lackluster. It's just not as much fun as opposed to working with someone who's a superhero in their own right, or looks like an important scientist as opposed to the sickly ones we get stuck with.
I'm not saying every contact should be Superman or Batman, but right now they're just a bunch of poor-looking, sick citizens.
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No thanks. There are quite a number of standalone missions that are either legitimately good, or expand on the lore of the game.|
Originally Posted by firespray
1. Remove the random missions that contacts give out. Instead, make it so that they only give out their story arc missions, the way the new contacts in Praetoria do. I understand why they were set up that way originally, but they just aren't needed anymore, and frankly, they detract from the story arcs.
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| 2. Change the contacts so that they give you their cell phone numbers much earlier, ideally after doing a single mission for them. This makes any running between zones that you need to do much less painless. |
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| 3. Make sure that contacts give out the missions in their story arcs in the same order to everyone. This makes it much easier to run a story arc in tandem with someone else. |
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| 4. Fix the story arc missions so that unless there is a good, story-related reason for it to be otherwise, all of the missions are in the zone that the contact is in. I understand that there are reasons that certain missions should be in certain zones, and I'm fine with that. But if you're just doing 3 different 'defeat all' missions to gather information, there's no need whatsoever for those 3 missions to be in 3 different zones (none of which is the zone that the contact is in). |
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| Number 4 would obviously be the most work, but even making the other 3 changes would make people far more likely to run the story arcs I think. And standard code rant applies of course, but on the surface, it seems like it would be a LOT less work to make those changes than to create an equivalent number of new story arcs. |
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I hadn't thought about that really. They already give you choices of two different missions a lot of the time, so maybe instead of getting rid of the random missions, they could just give you a choice of either a random mission or the first/next mission in their story arc. That way the people who want to do some of the random missions they give out can, and the people who want to get straight to the story arc can do that as well. |
Originally Posted by IanTheM1
No thanks. There are quite a number of standalone missions that are either legitimately good, or expand on the lore of the game.
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Originally Posted by IanTheM1
To be honest, I wouldn't be surprised if a majority of folks who refuse to run story arcs are the same people who endlessly run newspaper missions. It's pretty obvious that particular group doesn't care about story or clever mission design, just convenient XP. See also: The AE debacle.
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You can't really do this now though. Most of them, it's just a couple missions that they give out of order. As far as I know there aren't any arcs that you can completely pick and choose what order you run them in.
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Originally Posted by Forbin_Project
3. /unsigned. I like having the freedom to work on story-arcs in the order I want to do them.
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Yeah, all that would really need to be changed is having them cough up their story arcs immediately. This would also help reduce the pressure of outleveling arcs.
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Originally Posted by firespray
I hadn't thought about that really. They already give you choices of two different missions a lot of the time, so maybe instead of getting rid of the random missions, they could just give you a choice of either a random mission or the first/next mission in their story arc. That way the people who want to do some of the random missions they give out can, and the people who want to get straight to the story arc can do that as well.
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Actually, this has been done for most, if not all, regular (non-Detective) contacts in the game.|
Originally Posted by firespray
2. Change the contacts so that they give you their cell phone numbers much earlier, ideally after doing a single mission for them. This makes any running between zones that you need to do much less painless.
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It was done, I want to say either in I16 or I17. After you run the first mission and return to clear it with the contact, you should get the ability to call them.
Thank you for the time...
@Travlr (Main) / @Tymers Realm (Test) 
All I think should be done is to remove the "Talk to (PvP zone) Liason!" and "Talk to (Zone) Security Chief!" missions from regular contact and add them to a newbie-help contact. The number one thing that deters me from doing story arcs is having to run across three zones just to talk to someone who has information about something I'm not interested in. Especially without the cell phone number... and these missions are usually the first that contacts give out.
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Originally Posted by firespray
You can't really do this now though. Most of them, it's just a couple missions that they give out of order. As far as I know there aren't any arcs that you can completely pick and choose what order you run them in.
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Strange I usually have 2 choices to select from a contact unless it's at the end of what it has to offer.
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I think he's referring to the individual stories within an arch, which for a couple of archs *cough*Striga*cough* come in Random order making it so that people on the same arch ending up having to redo missions so other party members who did not get the right mission can end up getting it taken care of.
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Originally Posted by Forbin_Project
3. /unsigned. I like having the freedom to work on story-arcs in the order I want to do them.
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I would say reduce the number, not eliminate entirely. Redside seems to be pretty good about this, IMO, so you can use that model.|
Originally Posted by firespray
1. Remove the random missions that contacts give out. Instead, make it so that they only give out their story arc missions, the way the new contacts in Praetoria do. I understand why they were set up that way originally, but they just aren't needed anymore, and frankly, they detract from the story arcs.
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Also, ditch "talk to XXXX Liason" missions. If you want them to give a spiel about PvP zones or Hazard Zones for the newbies, fine, but don't make people run over to them (often in a different zone) for no good reason.
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Originally Posted by firespray
2. Change the contacts so that they give you their cell phone numbers much earlier, ideally after doing a single mission for them. This makes any running between zones that you need to do much less painless.
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Originally Posted by firespray
4. Fix the story arc missions so that unless there is a good, story-related reason for it to be otherwise, all of the missions are in the zone that the contact is in. I understand that there are reasons that certain missions should be in certain zones, and I'm fine with that. But if you're just doing 3 different 'defeat all' missions to gather information, there's no need whatsoever for those 3 missions to be in 3 different zones (none of which is the zone that the contact is in).
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Originally Posted by Lycanus
I think he's referring to the individual stories within an arch, which for a couple of archs *cough*Striga*cough* come in Random order making it so that people on the same arch ending up having to redo missions so other party members who did not get the right mission can end up getting it taken care of.
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Ok. That I can agree to. Striga is annoying like that.
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Unsigned. I like my random missions. If you want to run story missions exclusively, abandon the given missions until you receive a story arc one {you'll recognize it through the book icon in your contact list}|
Originally Posted by firespray
1. Remove the random missions that contacts give out. Instead, make it so that they only give out their story arc missions, the way the new contacts in Praetoria do. I understand why they were set up that way originally, but they just aren't needed anymore, and frankly, they detract from the story arcs.
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| 2. Change the contacts so that they give you their cell phone numbers much earlier, ideally after doing a single mission for them. This makes any running between zones that you need to do much less painless. |
Your wish has been retroactively granted.
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| 3. Make sure that contacts give out the missions in their story arcs in the same order to everyone. This makes it much easier to run a story arc in tandem with someone else. |
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| 4. Fix the story arc missions so that unless there is a good, story-related reason for it to be otherwise, all of the missions are in the zone that the contact is in. I understand that there are reasons that certain missions should be in certain zones, and I'm fine with that. But if you're just doing 3 different 'defeat all' missions to gather information, there's no need whatsoever for those 3 missions to be in 3 different zones (none of which is the zone that the contact is in). |
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I didn't realize they had done this. I didn't play a lot between I17 and GR. Glad to hear it though.|
Originally Posted by Quinch
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Originally Posted by Quinch
To my knowledge, story arcs always run missions from A->B->C etc. Not doing so would result in narrative confusion.
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Yeah, this is exactly what I meant. Sorry if it wasn't very clear.
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Originally Posted by Lycanus
I think he's referring to the individual stories within an arch, which for a couple of archs *cough*Striga*cough* come in Random order making it so that people on the same arch ending up having to redo missions so other party members who did not get the right mission can end up getting it taken care of.
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Haven't noticed it. Anyway, abandoning the mission will give you a new random one, so there's a solution already on hand.
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Originally Posted by firespray
No, they don't actually. Some of the arcs give certain missions out in a random order. The contact in The Hollows that gives the Frostfire Mission (can't think of his name right now) does this (and I'm sure there are others too). When my wife and I are running missions, it's a pain when he gives her a different mission than I got, since then we have to go through parts of the arc multiple times.
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It's obvious that there have been some major changes in the way story arcs are written over the years. Many of the oldest blueside arcs are extremely dated and, to be quite honest, not all that fun to play due to the way they're set up. Redside has a bit of this, but not nearly as much, due to it being newer. I think it's time to do something about this. The problems stem mostly from the fact that you get a ton of random missions that don't relate to the story arc at all, and many of the story arc missions send you all over the city, leading to you spending more time running around than you do actually running the story arc missions. There's several simple things that could be done to fix this.
1. Remove the random missions that contacts give out. Instead, make it so that they only give out their story arc missions, the way the new contacts in Praetoria do. I understand why they were set up that way originally, but they just aren't needed anymore, and frankly, they detract from the story arcs.
2. Change the contacts so that they give you their cell phone numbers much earlier, ideally after doing a single mission for them. This makes any running between zones that you need to do much less painless.
3. Make sure that contacts give out the missions in their story arcs in the same order to everyone. This makes it much easier to run a story arc in tandem with someone else.
4. Fix the story arc missions so that unless there is a good, story-related reason for it to be otherwise, all of the missions are in the zone that the contact is in. I understand that there are reasons that certain missions should be in certain zones, and I'm fine with that. But if you're just doing 3 different 'defeat all' missions to gather information, there's no need whatsoever for those 3 missions to be in 3 different zones (none of which is the zone that the contact is in).
Number 4 would obviously be the most work, but even making the other 3 changes would make people far more likely to run the story arcs I think. And standard code rant applies of course, but on the surface, it seems like it would be a LOT less work to make those changes than to create an equivalent number of new story arcs.