Mission Text-Feedback: Presentation, Formatting, etc.

I think there is such a thing as too little, but no such thing as too much. Why I think this will be detailed in the next question.

I firmly believe that properly used, it helps immensely. As to what I think proper use is; I do 2 things with color:

1) Critical warnings about the mission's nature, wether the presence of AV/EB class enemies, a mission timer, or something else gameplay related that a player deserves to be warned of, will either be highlighted in the mission text in a strong color, or appended on in an OOC "PS" after the contact's dialogue, again highlighted in a strong color.

2) I tend to find one or two sentences that sum up the "jist" of the mission, and highlight them in a moderately strong color, so that if you're skimming the mission text, but vaguely interested, you can read just those lines, and essentially have a handle on things. If the contact dialogue doesn't have sentences in it that sum it up, then it's likely I'm being too loquatious and need to rewrite it anyhow.

Actions can be incredibly important for characterizing the contact. Environment flavor, I dunno. Are the details of where you're meeting the contact important for creating a mood, or telling you something about the characters/situation? If so, then I think so, but I think this is likely to be important much less often than the former.

I personally feel that clues are a poor vehicle for delivering your story, and that events should be intelligible without reading any of them, if at all possible. The fact that they are hidden in a submenu, inconvenient to try and scroll through, and sharply interrupt the mid-mission action if they are too verbose are all points against them that make me not appreciate them. So I guess my answer would be "Any", as psychotic as that may seem.

I don't begrudge them existing though, I just don't want to stop every 2 minutes to read a short story, so I usually don't unless the story is forcing me to in order to follow it.

It's not the length but rather the formatting and actual wording. Line breaks and careful pacing can make a wall of text a lot easier to climb.

It really depends on the color used and placement. I will say that too many different colors is quite distracting.

I think the mission popup can help out a fair bit in setting the mood. I'll say be wary on directly stating contact actions since it can sometimes take you out of the story rather than pull you in.

Rather than "per mission" I'd say be careful with having more than 20 per arc since it can potentially be a wall of text. I'll admit that I've probably broken this suggestion at least once. On the flip side, it personally feels weird for an arc to have no clues at all but there are authors who make it work. I'd err on the side of adding a clue versus using the mission outro text since the rest of the team can't see it and clues in AE are created for team members who join late and missed full missions.

Just like with mission text; it can be very helpful but you must be wary on not overdoing it.

My Arcs
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Mission Architect Handyman