should we be able to fail more?

It's all well and good to make some missions appeal to certain playstyles. To that end I'd like to see missions we can fail, but, only if failure is due to actions and not kill speed. Then those simply become missions you play on certain ATs or with a team and avoid on others.

It is not a good idea to, as someone suggested, put timers on every story arc end mission. The game has to appeal to a wide range of players, and not everyone has the luxury of playing uninterrupted. Timed missions, if they are to have a timer that actually makes the player feel pressured, would need to have a maximum time based on AT or require a team, otherwise they would also fall into the "only play solo on certain ATs" category.

Another avenue of 'failure' is the old Preatorian trick of "If you don't do suchandsuch by X time, reinforcements will arrive!" Basically a kind of objective where, if you fail it, you just make your job harder.

I like these because, on some characters it does put the pressure on. 'Crapcrapcrapcrap! I don't wanna have to deal with another set of ambushes!!' With other's it can be like 'Hmpf, bring it foo!'.

Either way, I'm not really failing and I don't need extra rewards for it (except maybe a quicker path to the end-mission bonus).

But yes, more mission variety is always welcome in the monotony of kill alls, click glowie and beat boss and guard. That includes failable missions, missions with extra rewards for completing all objectives, missions that are made easier by completing objectives, missions made harder for failing objectives or just missions with parts you can miss or go wrong.

I've always lived by the saying "If you can't lose, what fun is winning?"
However, sometimes i just want to play without the pressure of avoiding failure. Sometimes i'd like a challenge, sometimes i'd like to relax. Having both options is what makes a good game to me. I do think we need more 'win or lose' missions with rewards for winning a tough challenge. As long as there are also some other missions just for having fun without pressure.

The value of success can only be measured by the consequences of failure.

It's not enough that there just be more ways to fail. Anybody can crank up the dif to +5x8 and then take a pug of SK'd newbies out on a Maria Jenkins. What's important to remember is that the game is telling a story, and whether you succeed or fail, the story needs to move forward. Failure should not consist of throwing yourself at a wall of enemies, hoping to take one out before you die, then running back from the hosp to repeat until you clear the mission. That's not success, it's just tedium born of determination.

The "new" phasing technology available in CoH allows for scenarios I've desired (and asked for, only to be told it would never be possible) such as having the perceived environment change based on the consequences of your actions. Imagine a mission or story arc where you must protect a building from being destroyed... If you succeed, the building remains, but if you fail, your "phase" for that part of the zone now has a bombed out husk of that building. You could also turn that around, and use it on a larger scale to have your character help rebuild Boomtown one ruined block at a time, maybe even finishing with a statue of your character (mirror image NPC with coloring modification to match cement or marble, maybe an increase in size, and just permanently standing on a pedestal unmoving, and untargetable).

With success in certain story arcs, you could drastically alter the perceived spawn of local mob groups, for instance, actually cleaning up the Skulls in Kings Row, or kicking the Council out of Sharkhead. With failure in those same storyarcs, the spawn rate could change just as much, but down a different path, to show the consequences of failure... for instance the Skulls have solidified their powerbase in King's Row, meaning that they now spawn in larger groups, and in areas generally claimed by other factions in the zone... We've seen tiny hints of what this tech can do, killing a praetorian contact, or cleaning up the Hellions by the bank in Atlas.

That's just the tip of the iceberg though. Imagine being able to cure the Lost on a large scale, or taking out a few key men and taking over The Family as it's new boss. Imagine turning Atlas Park into a haven for goodly NPCs safe from the dangers of purse snatchers and loiterers. Imagine screwing it all up and having Atlas taken over by hordes of Arachnos troops loyal to Lord Recluse (ironically also eliminating purse-snatchers and loitering Hellions)... All these things and more can be done, allowing your characters successes, failures, and choices to actually matter (at least in the world as he perceives it).

None of these things would mean that the time you invested in trying to accomplish something was "wasted" if you happen to fail a world-changing mission... Quite the opposite in fact, it guarantees that succeed or fail, you made a difference. You may not be on the same path you were traveling before, but you're definitely further down the road than when you started, instead of merely being a little bit of XP closer to the next level.

I'm honestly a bit mixed. I kind of agree with Leo, I prefer more 'this objective is optional, but it will help you if you get it done' style missions than strict "Do this right or fail".

I've done a few examples of fail-able missions. In Faultline, when you rescue Doc Delilah it's possible for her to be killed. It's not a bad mission, but since you're attacked by ambushes and she will stay and fight them to the finish, you have to hand hold her the whole time. It was honestly kind of frustrating the first (and only) time I failed it.

The other one, I forget the contact, was a 'stop the gangster from escaping' mission. Problem: There's no way to tell where an enemy is on the map without a marker or physically running into them. Given how 99% of the game is, I thought the 'stop from escaping' was merely flavor and they'd be sitting with a spawn in the back of the instance with a couple flunkies. NOPE! As soon as he spawns he begins a dash to the door and since it was a warehouse level there were 2 completely different paths. I chose poorly. Got to the end of the warehouse and no boss. I panicked, -zoomed- back to the entrance just in time to witness him going through the door and seeing that "FAILED MISSION" text pop up. -Really- disappointing. I'd have been better off just camping at the door, but since it's such a complete rarity in the game, I didn't know.

Oh and then that pain in the *** Croatoa mission that from here on out I will -always- auto complete because trying to stop the Fir Bolg from passing through the portal with just a couple people is insane, much more trying to solo it. It's not fun, it's downright frustrating knowing failure is -inevitable-.

Though, to touch on the 'do this or the mission gets harder' style things, I don't mind the mechanic, except when it forces me to feel under the sword of damacles because the timer is too damn short. Going into a level and being told "You have 3 minutes to search 3 floors for a randomly placed glowie or get nailed by ambushes" is -really- kind of irritating. Kind of like with the Halloween Tip mission. It's better for me to just stealth and speed to the end than trying to fight and get a tiny boost of time.

That said, I also agree, I -love- any optional stuff that gives a worthwhile reward for getting it done, including the stuff in iTrials or the Apex/Tin Mage TFs.

A chance to fail is fine, IF there's an oppurtunity to try again.

Trials (the original kind) were only differentiated from Task Forces by a chance to fail. Some (like the respec trial) make you restart the failed mission. Others just outright fail and you have to start over.

Most failable missions cost you nothing more than the end-of-mission rewards. This is fine by me.

Incarnate trials can be failed, and doing so costs the entire league their potential rewards. This sucks, but it can be retried, so I don't mind.

Things where failing once means that you will never get that reward are not cool in my book. Yes, I'm talking about you, Efficiency Expert Pither. They annoy me so much that I've never even attempted Pither's badge, even though I've had several people tell me how easy it is, even though I'm fully IO'd out with T3/4 Incarnate abilites, even though my girlfriend got it by accident when she didn't even know the badge existed, just because I know that if I do try for it, there's a chance that I may have a hiccup in my Internet, or a power failure, or a lag spike, and fail a mission, losing the badge. In my mind, not having the badge, but having the chance to get it later is better than losing the one and only chance to get it ever.
There's a few other newer badges that I would look at the same way, like Vincent Ross's for doing the side missions in his arc, or the Hero one for rescuing cops in a burning building. Screw those up and lose the badge. But those ones are in Ouroboros, so I can try again - so they don't bother me.

Short version: Failable is fine. Failable with no chance to ever try again is bad.

There is an old adage: "never ask a question you don't already know the answer to."

Likewise, I never run a mission that I don't know in advance I will successfully complete.

Should it be that way? Some players do like suspenseful situations where the outcome is in doubt. That closely resembles how it is in real life.

But for me CoH is escape from real life and if I can play it to never fail, then that is what I will do.

Given the overall level of bugs, poor coding, unreliable servers, and a host of other problems from needy pets to power failures that are outside the control of both PS and the players, this is a horrible idea.

I started CoX 8 years, 3 houses, 5 internet providers and six computers ago and I still get mapservered more often than I like. As it is, I have to restart the mission when that happens. If that happened on the final mission of an arc and then people were totally locked out of completing it, got diminished or no rewards or some other penalty, then the rage would be more trouble than the devs want to deal with.

While this idea isn't quite as stupid as permadeath, it fails for the same reasons. There are too many external factors that could cause missions to be failed for it to ever really work.

It's a complicated issue. For example, one thing that hasn't come up in the thread is what happens when you have a whole team full of people with the same mission. This happens to me pretty regularly. We're all in the RWZ, we all have the same mission, we fail, and the mission owner gets a new mission from the contact but everyone else still has the old mission. Now we have an array of bad choices. Do the exact same mission over again (possibly over and over seven times to get everyone through it), or burn a mission complete (knowing that the same thing will probably happen in the next mission), or proceed with one person's mission chain while everyone else is left behind in terms of completing the content. They're all bad choices.

On the one hand, I like the fact that we can get a second shot at succeeding in the mission. On the other hand, I hate that we often need three or four tries before we can keep the stupid suicidal squishy hostages alive.

There's also a balance of happiness. I suspect that failing a mission causes more negative feelings than succeeding at a failable mission causes positive feelings. In other words, imagine we could measure happiness in units called "haps". Finishing a regular mission might give you 5 haps. Steamrolling a mission with no challenge might only give you 3 haps. The kind of mission where you're always on the verge of a team wipe but somehow you keep pulling it off with just a few deaths here and there might give you 9 haps. Now, if you add missions that can fail, succeeding might produce 10 haps. Perhaps 15 if it's really challenging. The problem is that failing at that same mission will produce negative 20 haps.

All in all, the existence of such a mission will result in an overall loss of happiness in the playerbase. That's not much of a goal to strive for. (Of course, I'm obviously just making up numbers here, but I do think these proportions are in the right ballpark on average.)

I say yes!...But not for all missions out there, they will only work on some types others..

There is a difference between raising the difficulty and being able to fail missions. If you are running mission at the highest level you can handle, that's the most you can handle. Raising difficulty isn't risking failure it is pretty much guaranteeing it.

In the larger sense though you can die 20 times in a mission/trial and it usually means nothing, especially if you are 50.

Now make an iTrial with increased chance of VRare/Rare but for each person the maxiumum reward level is reduced for each death (no deaths VRare-Common, 1 death Rare-Common, 2 deaths Ucommon-Common, 3 Deaths Common, 4 deaths threads) and people would play that Trial very differently.

If you did a LAM like this, people wouldn't be able to run around like chickens with their heads cut off while getting nades/acids.

This is a chance at failing without just increasing difficulty. The downside is that some trials are so complicated you just run them with a core of people who know what they are doing and drag everyone else along. Add this wrinkle and the core groups would start to scheduling things and not invite anyone else.

Personnally if it make it fun/interesting I don't mind a chance of failure as long as it is only a chance. Feeling like you lose everytime is why a lot of people hate PvP. I don't like PvP but I'd play missions where a hero team goes in same instance as villain team and competes for glowies. That could be fun provided the idiot brigade doesn't "game the system" so that they always win.