New content is great, but...
Definitely agree on about the Tips. I am a big fan of tip missions and would like to see them add more to the 50 set.
However I am less sure about updating old content. It sounds great in principle but history suggests I am not always happy with the results when it happens. As long as they don't close off old content (like they did with Atlas Park/Galaxy) I would rather they just develop new content.
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I'd love to see a little work done each issue on some back filling.
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This might be put out as a challenge to the AE writers out there, come up with single-mission arcs to be submitted as tip missions. It would still need some polishing by a dev, since AE doesn't have all the bells and whistles current content has like a real "talk with this person", but would be fun in itself as well as may be help.
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This is kind of why I'm apprehensive about messing with old content. Yes, old content has a lot of wasteful time sinks, but it's also much more true to the game's mechanics and a much more pure gaming experience that doesn't yank me out of the experience by the collar so I can read some more text boxes. Mission designers of today seem to have no sense of flow and stick lengthy conversations and cutscenes in the middle of what would otherwise be a smooth, flowing experience. They overcomplicate mechanics and put me through very inflexible, tight scripted sequences so that I can retrace their intended steps and supposedly go through a more interesting experience.
The big irony of the situation is that the more you untie my hands and let me solve the situation in my own way, the more accomplished I'll feel. Some of the most intense and cinematic experiences I've gone through haven't been the result of strict scripting, they have been the result of a collision of chance. Because the old content is so simple and so uncontrolled, unpredictable things happen if you don't approach everything with clinical precision, and THAT is what's cool about them. The new content is so complex that the only way to solve it is the way the mission designers planned for you, right down mission-specific enemies not spawning if you haven't spoken with the person following you. The hell? Isn't it assumed that if the person is following me and helping me, we already spoke off-camera?\
As far as I'm concerned, our mission designers shouldn't be trying to top players by cramming their missions full of needlessly complex scripting to the point where sneezing the wrong way will break something. They should learn from players in how to make good missions WITHOUT having to resort to complex scripting. The worst thing that can happen to old content is for it to be "fixed" to be more complicated. If anything, new content should be simplified so I don't spend more time speaking with people than shooting people in the face. This is not a point-and-click adventure game.
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YES to more tips. They're so much fun.
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Talking of Michelangelo.
New Tip missions to the level 50 set would be great! You are going to be running those a lot after all
Overall I feel the quality of the Morality system missions is very high, they are very enjoyable!
More tips would be good yes, but 'updating' existing arcs is fraught with danger.
You only need to look at the current train wreck that used to be Maria Jenkins excellent arc to see what can go very, very wrong.
A hero's hero used to be my favourite arc, and it was 'updated' in a fashion that made it boring and extremely dull to play.
I see what the OP is saying with updating arcs but it needs to be done with more thought and indeed care than we've seen so far......
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I like the old content. There are just few changes that I would do.
1) Find other way to introduce player to PvP - I hate that first mission of new contact is speak with PvP zone representative.
2) Don't send me across town for mission while I don't have phone number yet. It is bad enough when you solo, but in team you are making 7 more people waiting for me while I run to contact, to get new mission that could be in any zone. That is one of the reasons that teams mostly stick to radios, tips or new contacts.
Defeat all missions are fine by me. If there weren't any defeat all missions, some of my alts would never level solo (when solo I tend to skip to objective).
Also I like the idea that people would use AE to create TIP missions, and the best mission could be promoted into regular TIP missions.
"If you want to win you must not lose."
"Easiest way to turn defeat into a victory is to put on the enemy's uniform"
"Better strategic retreat than dishonorable defeat"
I adore the Tip missions. More variety would be awesome.
Also, no objection here to some new newspaper/radio missions.
Sadly, it seems with the exception of the SSA, there is very little other new questing content being added for the most part. I'd love to see a quest or two added for all level brackets, here and there on a regular basis. Not much, just an occasional nod that the players like me who love leveling and alting still exist.
I am aware of First Ward. However.... the near constant ambushes and heavy use of psi-damage/end drain turned me off of running that area after I took one at-level squishy alt through.
Not all of us are crazy about raiding, so the iTrials are simply not even an option.
I completely disagree. Vehemently, in fact. I don't mean about holding a competition, that's a good idea. I mean the notion that "speak with person" is the making of a good mission. On the contrary, I find this to be one of the most annoying things to stick into a mission, especially for no reason. It's right there with protection objectives and escorts for no reason. Just because you CAN have me converse with a computer through three text screens of made-up ridiculous text interface doesn't mean you SHOULD.
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I would like to see the old arcs all cleaned up first simply by
1. making all missions spawn in the same zone as the contact
2. eliminate all street sweeping missions (defeat 10 CoT in KR, etc)
leave us with just the door missions and avoid the running - they might not be great, but the experience would be vastly better at what should be very little dev effort per arc
If they do a rolling zone upgrade for the game, starting with Atlas and Mercy, then the old arcs will be replaced with newer more dynamic ones.
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It seems like you leaned a little too hard on the "letter of the law" so to speak than the spirit of the suggestion. While it could be argued that some mission writers script things too much, the concept of being able to use a tool for story telling. I guess I can see some of the hate since the devs have no middle ground. Either a zone gets blown up and filled with aliens/demons or it's totally untouched. In fact, the main part of the suggestion is that they need to make small adjustments here and there. Especially multiple missions that are back to back that do the same thing.
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It seems like Paragon Studios doesn't do "small adjustments." They either ignore content and leave it to linger forever, or they take a jackhammer, a shotgun and an axe to it, then try to pick up the pieces and see what comes out. If at all possible, I'd love for them to make a pass through the game and clean up mission mistakes, or even prune unnecessary missions. Something like this happened to the Ouro introduction arc, which is both a good idea and a subtle fix. Now Mender Silos talks about an alternate timeline when the Shivans landed in Atlas Park instead of Galaxy City, and this is spliced into the old text, which I remember by heart because I'm an idiot who plays that mission every time and learned the text of it.
Sadly, the splicing is done quite badly, as you can REALLY tell Mender Silos' new dialogue apart from his old one. The style of speech is quite different: He uses more contractions, he uses more colloquialisms (Paragon City becomes "Paragon," Galacy City becomes "Galaxy" and so forth) and the basic paragraphing just seems odd. It's clumsy, but as subtle changes go, this one is about the best I've seen since Altas dying while defending Independence Port from an invading alien armada (which is still in the Security Chief briefing for Indy Port, mind you), and it represents one of the best - BEST - ideas for real time in this game: Alternate timelines.
Here's how I see it:
Back in 2004, we were just getting out of Galaxy City and just facing the Rikti for the first time. Now Galaxy City is destroyed the Rikti have invaded as soon as level 1. So what about those characters and storylines that take place afterwards that don't make sense with these changes (Angus McQueen)? Alternate timeline. In THIS timeline, by the time we reach Angus, the Rikti have already invaded, but our characters that worked with him before they were invading from level 1 weren't having a daydream. It really happened. But someone's been messing with the timeline, so their past changed from right under them, and it seems like Angus was simply unaffected.
Yeah, it's kin of a cop out, but it's the good kind that's actually quite enjoyable
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Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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How about, every issue, update a couple old arcs? I'm not asking for a full redrafting, just a little blue pencil work. "OK, we've got them hunting 200 foes here. Let's make it 10. These three missions are all the same thing, let's cut it back to one. Huge map, defeat all - shrink the map and make it just the boss room to be cleared."
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I would like to see the old arcs all cleaned up first simply by
1. making all missions spawn in the same zone as the contact 2. eliminate all street sweeping missions (defeat 10 CoT in KR, etc) leave us with just the door missions and avoid the running - they might not be great, but the experience would be vastly better at what should be very little dev effort per arc |
the thing is you can street sweep all you want without missions
if people are choosing to do missions it basically means they want to do door missions
I hate the choice of "do you want to do A or B, you said B okay do A"
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I will do it more, but it requires research on the forums to find good arcs.
Street sweeping missions are so incredibly bad.
And it's not so much that they're easy or hard, as it is that it's incredibly frustrating to talk to someone who says "oh yeah, you'll find the lost in kings row" only to find out that there are very few specific spots in an area on the zone where they show up, and they share spawn locations with other groups so you might fly right by ALL of their spawns and never see one... And ask yourself "WHAT in the WORLD is this guy THINKING? There are no lost here!"
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I've thought that some of the various old missions we do could use some tweaks without much major adjustment.
For instance, when you do one of the Crey Arcs you have been framed as having gone bad, and you're ambushed by Malta. Since we now have both Longbow and the Paragon Police Deptartment, why not change those Malta into one of the above groups?
There's another one-off mission given by the Revenant Hero Contact where you find out that Crey has made a Paragon Protector based on you. Back when that arc was written, the doppleganger tech did not exist so it was just an energy/energy PP. Why not let it be a REAL double now?
I have generally enjoyed Angus McQueen's stories, but he could use some new tweaking as well... and why doesn't his model get updated as having had the Lost cure?
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Street sweeping missions are so incredibly bad.
And it's not so much that they're easy or hard, as it is that it's incredibly frustrating to talk to someone who says "oh yeah, you'll find the lost in kings row" only to find out that there are very few specific spots in an area on the zone where they show up, and they share spawn locations with other groups so you might fly right by ALL of their spawns and never see one... And ask yourself "WHAT in the WORLD is this guy THINKING? There are no lost here!" |
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Street sweeping missions are so incredibly bad.
And it's not so much that they're easy or hard, as it is that it's incredibly frustrating to talk to someone who says "oh yeah, you'll find the lost in kings row" only to find out that there are very few specific spots in an area on the zone where they show up, and they share spawn locations with other groups so you might fly right by ALL of their spawns and never see one... And ask yourself "WHAT in the WORLD is this guy THINKING? There are no lost here!" |
I'd love to see a little work done each issue on some back filling.
First of all - can we get some new Tip missions? I like the Tip missions, they're tightly crafted, tell a story in a single mission, and have some fun twists. But I do five a day on my main scrapper, and have them all memorized.
This might be put out as a challenge to the AE writers out there, come up with single-mission arcs to be submitted as tip missions. It would still need some polishing by a dev, since AE doesn't have all the bells and whistles current content has like a real "talk with this person", but would be fun in itself as well as may be help.
Second - clearly, over the years, the devs have changed the ways they tell stories in missions. Not just with the new tech, but there used to be a big focus on time sinks. Some of the old arcs have GREAT stories, but they're trapped in the old boring style. How about, every issue, update a couple old arcs? I'm not asking for a full redrafting, just a little blue pencil work. "OK, we've got them hunting 200 foes here. Let's make it 10. These three missions are all the same thing, let's cut it back to one. Huge map, defeat all - shrink the map and make it just the boss room to be cleared."
I'm not asking for a Issue 24: BackFill where all the old content gets touched and we get 10 new tip missions at each range for each alignment. Just a little here and there.
My arcs are constantly shifting, just search for GadgetDon for the latest.
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