should we be able to fail more?

not be defeated, but actually fail missions. And not forced failures like no matter what you do Statesman is killed. But as in Lady Jane gets defeated or more than 30 fir bolgs escape.

A lot of missions say there is time pressure but then there is none.

Whereas in safeguard if you do not stop the bombs in the sewers they blow up and if you are inside you are defeated.

Or you can just fail to stop the bank robbery.

I like the idea of having some higher pressure missions - with a higher xp reward for mission success, maybe.

I wonder if the repeatable missions in pvp zones, hollows, etc could be changed to a shorter time limit like 15 minutes. Make them rush missions. Of course that might just mean ninjaing missions

No the failure rate is balanced properly ATM, thanks for asking.

Here's a classic situation I've seen repeated over and over again. Join a PuG doing radio or tip missions. After a couple of missions where everything is going smoothly someone makes a suggestion to raise the difficulty. The Diff is raised +3 (or more--testosterone poisoning at its best) and during the next mission there are multiple team wipes. Soon after the team disbands. Rinse and Repeat.

But on a serious note, we have complete control over how difficult our missions are. All the situations you describe above are possible depending upon your difficulty setting.

I'd rather have more positive reinforcements (like how you can get extra Astral merits in iTrials if you manage to complete the objectives that would award you extra badges) than to have more failure scenarios. I think more people would want to focus on trying for the bonus rewards than to have to worry about failing the basic missions.

That's a good idea Lothic

instead of after 15 minutes you get a mission fail, if you complete in 15 minutes you get a bonus reward

I always wondered about the TF settings you can pick, were they ever good for anything besides bragging rights (or in the obvious cases "Master Of" badges)? For example, if you completed a Synapse with 0 deaths in less than an hour did you get extra shiny rewards?

Normally I'd say "Yeah I guess" but after TPN...

Nope Nope Nope Nope Nope Nope Nope Nope Nope Nope Nope Nope Nope Nope Nope Nope Nope Nope Nope Nope Nope Nope Nope Nope Nope Nope Nope Nope Nope Nope Nope Nope Nope Nope Nope Nope Nope Nope Nope Nope Nope Nope Nope Nope Nope Nope Nope Nope Nope Nope Nope Nope Nope Nope Nope Nope Nope Nope Nope Nope Nope Nope Nope Nope Nope Nope Nope Nope Nope Nope Nope Nope Nope Nope Nope Nope Nope Nope Nope Nope Nope Nope Nope Nope Nope Nope Nope Nope Nope Nope.

Yes and no depending on the situation

For example i like the side missions in safeguards/mayhems a LOT since those you can fail but it has no actual affect on if you can complete the mission or not. Deactivating the bombs to stop the explosion as an example, leave it long enough and building goes boom!

while it would be likely time prohibitive to write stories with a lot of different branches, I would like missions to go on different tracks if certain objectives werent met, yeah.

Take the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.

I severely dislike fail conditions.

Nothing turns me off to a game more than getting 75% of the way through a mission, failing, and having to start all over again at 0%.

I much prefer the typical MMO style of simply not making any progress if you die. If you hit a roadblock at 75%, you just stay at 75%, you don't fall back to 0%. Then it's in your hands whether you want to keep throwing yourself at the mission or come back later and try again.

I like the 'extra reward if you manage to do X' as opposed to 'fail if you don't manage to do X'.

That said, I don't think it would be a bad idea to add 'fail' conditions when possible as a difficulty option (like the settings you can adjust at the rep contacts) for those hardcore players and/or those types of players that have the mindset to delete a character after it's defeated the first time.

The 'fail' options could be like:

Hostages become targetable, attacked, and killed, you must protect them. (some actually were targetable when the tech was first introduced, folks raised a HUGE stink about it and it was removed, but I know it's possible for them to do this)

Adding timers to appropriate missions when you're told "Hurry, there's not much time!" on those that don't have timers now, of if singling those out is too difficult, add a timer to every last mission at the end of all the story arcs.

Lower the ammount of time available on missions which already have timers.

Team wipes (or your character defeated, when solo) will fail the mission.

Stuff like that. However, they MUST be selectable options. I don't think it'd be well recieved if they just started making difficulties like this standard.

Would I peresonally use any of them? Probably not, I don't like to fail, but I don't see any reason the option shouldn't be available to those who want them as long as they're not too difficult to implement. I couldn't (and wouldn't want to) see the Dev's taking out a lot of time for new code for this. However, If they did, I'm sure they'd add reward bonuses for them as well to get the most ammount of people to try them.

The Incarnate Trials are all failable

i agree a majority of the timed mishs give enormous amounts of time (aside from efficiency expert pithers mishs where a majority of them are 10-15 min and can actually be difficult to finish on anything but minimal team size)

borea mishs give about 30-90 min to do a mish that takes 10


honestly though unless theres a badge involved (a la efficiency expert) then personally i dont give a hoot if i fail a mish, sometimes i even let mishs fail cause im too lazy to actually do them lol

But still strangely popular

As a general rule, I'd agree with the previous sentiments about the difficulty slider and about offering rewards for succeeding at difficult objectives which can be failed.

Having said that, I would be interested in stories where failure can advance the story in an alternate direction instead of just being a footnote in the mission NPC's dialog.

I remember the old Maria Jenkins arc, which had the 10 minute timed mission in it. You were looking for a glowie, no other objectives. It didn't matter if you succeeded or failed, the arc still continued onwards; all that was changed was the text from Maria afterwards.

That kind of fail I am okay with. It doesn't really invalidate my time at all, and I still get the chance to try to succeed. The future of my character and their gameplay isn't riding on whether I get it right the first time.

Almost all of the content in CoH is similar to this. You can restart it if you fail, and there are no limitations to this. The only arc that doesn't belong to this is Efficiency Expert Pither's arc, which can only be attempted once.

So, are these options at semi-failure good? In reality, I'd say no, as we rarely get the chance of a do-over. However, in a game that is definitely not reality, and is strictly for entertainment, I would say that our limited ability to fail is a good thing; it doesn't drive away players, which keeps the game in business.

Yes, there are some who would like the game to be more realistic. Most people play games, read books, watch movies, etc., as an escape from their reality, a momentary release of the stress and anxieties that they face on a daily basis. I guess it really depends on the kind of person you are, and no one can tell you that except for yourself.

tl;dr: CoH has some ways to fail, but not really. Some people like to fail, others don't. Good business = keeping both camps happy.

I was rather impressed with one of the missions in Praetoria where the objective is to save as many people from the BAF as possible, but you obviously can't save them all - and depending on your playstyle and archetype, you might be cursing yourself at how long it takes to defeat two minions to rescue a hostage.

I personally would say yes. As much as I hate failing, I think it adds a bit more challenge to the game, which is missing in the average mission. As it stand now, we can't really fail at anything. Even the worst player will eventually win out in the end, even if it takes 50 trips to the hospital.

I like my actions to have consequences.