My Mission Diversification Manifesto

[DougGraves]

This manifesto defines standards for mission arcs of 2+ missions.  These standards are intended to make a mission arc interesting to play and non-repetitive, while remaining coherent.  It is understood that bad mission arcs can be created using these standards, good writing and creativity is still required.

 

Length: Mission arcs can have no more than five missions. 

 

Maps: Mission arcs cannot use the same map type in more than half, rounded down, of the missions.  A map is considered the same type even if it has some thematic difference (warehouse and warehouse on fire) but not if a significant portion of the map is a different type (office and office leading to Rikti base).

 

Enemy Groups – Max Repeat:  Mission arcs cannot use the same enemy group in more than half, rounded up, of the missions, unless there are other enemy groups in the same mission in significant numbers.  Single spawns of an enemy group do not count against the is limit. 

 

Enemy Groups – Min Repeat: At least one enemy group must appear in at least half, rounded down, of the missions.  An appearance counts even if it is only a single spawn or a non-combatant.

 

Objectives:  A maximum of one defeat all is allowed in a mission arc.  A maximum of one escort is allowed in a mission arc, if the escort is required.  A minimum of two objectives is required in each mission.  Patrol missions are not allowed in mission arcs (the clicking on patrol box missions).

 

Zones: A maximum of one move to a different zone is allowed in a mission arc.

 

Phones: Only starting the first mission can require talking to the contact in person.  After that the phone must be available for starting and ending all missions.

[srmalloy]

I was going to post a longer reply, but... No. Just no. This straitjackets the creation of story arcs to an unreasonable extent, and there are good story arcs already in existence that break the 'rules' you want to impose -- "The Clockwork Captive", for example.

[Queen Nefertiti]

The only thing I like is the phone. It's annoying having to keep zoning to talk to someone just to get the next mission

[MTeague]

"World Wide Red" is probably one of the best mission arcs I've seen in the entire game, in AE or not.  Pratoria or vanilla.  It's full of Malta sure, but it's awesome story-wise and people should really take the time to treat themselves to it and READ IT some day.  

 

It's FAR longer than 5 missions. It's longer than some task forces I've been on.  I don't care. 

Maybe you prefer short paperbacks.  Some of us enjoy long and complex stories. 

[Doc_Scorpion]

6 hours ago, srmalloy said:

I was going to post a longer reply, but... No. Just no. This straitjackets the creation of story arcs to an unreasonable extent, and there are good story arcs already in existence that break the 'rules' you want to impose -- "The Clockwork Captive", for example.

Yeah, I was going to write a longer reply too...  But after the fourth time I typed "completely idiotic" I realized that I should just quote and agree with what srmalloy posted.

[boggo2300]

I dislike every single one of the points of your manifesto so thats a /jranger from me

[Gulbasaur]

Have you only been playing the early-added content? Most of the later stuff (mostly post-CoV and definitely post-GR) is considerably better paced. The dev team worked out what worked well and what didn't The RWZ, DA, FW and DW content is all pretty excellent. You can see in certain areas where they experimented with one kind of storytelling and learnt from it later - Croatoa is basically an earlyl testing-ground for a lot of stuff that you see later. I remember it coming out and it all feeling really fresh and dynamic.

16 hours ago, DougGraves said:

Length: Mission arcs can have no more than five missions. 

I like arcs that tell a story. I'd say that this is only really a problem for task forces where you're locked in. I do wish there was a better way of doing old missions than the Flashback lock-in, though. 

16 hours ago, DougGraves said:

Maps: Mission arcs cannot use the same map type in more than half, rounded down, of the missions

Eh. This is considerably better in later-added missions and kind of a moot point. I'd like to see some of the rarer map types used more, though (the faultline diagonal ones, for example). 

16 hours ago, DougGraves said:

Enemy Groups – Max Repeat:  Mission arcs cannot use the same enemy group in more than half, rounded up, of the missions, unless there are other enemy groups in the same mission in significant numbers.  Single spawns of an enemy group do not count against the is limit. 

So every story arc has to have multiple factions at play? Nah. That's a storytelling constraint that we don't need. 

16 hours ago, DougGraves said:

Enemy Groups – Min Repeat: At least one enemy group must appear in at least half, rounded down, of the missions.  An appearance counts even if it is only a single spawn or a non-combatant.

They basically do already. 

16 hours ago, DougGraves said:

Objectives:  A maximum of one defeat all is allowed in a mission arc.  A maximum of one escort is allowed in a mission arc, if the escort is required.  A minimum of two objectives is required in each mission.  Patrol missions are not allowed in mission arcs (the clicking on patrol box missions).

I don't think any of the later-added missions have defeat-alls. 

16 hours ago, DougGraves said:

Zones: A maximum of one move to a different zone is allowed in a mission arc.

I really don't mind it, and it can give a sense of progression. One of the task forces has a sequence of hunts that take place across different zones and that can actually feel really awesome if your team coordinates it well. 

 

I think you're complaining about a lot of stuff that has already been fixed and is already known about. I don't think any new story arcs would have bland, defeat-all missions and the newer content sets a much higher expectation. 

[Erydanus]

All these points (that I don't agree with) and you didn't even toss out something like "no more than 1 street sweep mission" because honestly those are generally not fun, and they don't scale well. What's a trivial minute for a team could be 15+ minutes of pain to a soloer depending on the foes and the zone. For instance I'm currently soloing through Striga on a controller and while the indoor missions scale fine, having to defeat 20 council in a specific neighborhood where they're groups of 5-6 warwolves who are +1 to me did NOT go well. And there's multiple of that kind of mission. 

[boggo2300]

21 hours ago, Erydanus said:

All these points (that I don't agree with) and you didn't even toss out something like "no more than 1 street sweep mission" because honestly those are generally not fun, and they don't scale well. What's a trivial minute for a team could be 15+ minutes of pain to a soloer depending on the foes and the zone. For instance I'm currently soloing through Striga on a controller and while the indoor missions scale fine, having to defeat 20 council in a specific neighborhood where they're groups of 5-6 warwolves who are +1 to me did NOT go well. And there's multiple of that kind of mission. 

I hate the street sweeping mishes, you either get stuck with mobs too high a level, or much worse too low, so you are robbed of rewards for that mish!

[quixoteprog]

All I want is a warning for a couple things BEFORE I accept it.

 

1) about how long will it take.

2) does it have a time limit.

3) Is there a mob in it that if it does will fail the mission.

 

That last one is one I don't particularly like. Mainly because the AI is stupid and will get them killed. Often these mob are "assistants" who will attack stuff and get themselves killed if I am not running a guy with taunt.

 

I would accept a mission that broke any of the OP rules as long as I had some way of telling what I was getting into beforehand. That may not be "realistic" but I have a job and other obligations in the "realistic" world.

 

 

[boggo2300]

11 hours ago, quixoteprog said:

All I want is a warning for a couple things BEFORE I accept it.

 

1) about how long will it take.

2) does it have a time limit.

3) Is there a mob in it that if it does will fail the mission.

 

That last one is one I don't particularly like. Mainly because the AI is stupid and will get them killed. Often these mob are "assistants" who will attack stuff and get themselves killed if I am not running a guy with taunt.

 

I would accept a mission that broke any of the OP rules as long as I had some way of telling what I was getting into beforehand. That may not be "realistic" but I have a job and other obligations in the "realistic" world.

 

 

You don't fail if the aggro magnets die anymore, they actually changed that on live near the end

[quixoteprog]

13 hours ago, boggo2300 said:

You don't fail if the aggro magnets die anymore, they actually changed that on live near the end

I beg to differ. Most recent example I can recall was a mission to save some Rikti diplomats in the War Zone who had been kidnapped by Nemesis. The first one I rescued was some kind of "Chief Mentalist" or something who wanted to help attack stuff; which is fine. But because it was F***ing Nemesis there were snipers which meant he aggroed 2-3 spawns that once and wound up dying. The instant that happened I was kicked out of the mission and it failed. That is fine. But it should have spelled that out in the mission because I would have been much more cautious in how I aggroed stuff. Doing corner pulls and stuff. I was just careless, but in 99% of the missions you can BE careless.

 

I would amend number 3, (not just to correct my typo, "dies" instead of "does") but to add "if it escapes" as well. Since I had one mission where I was supposed to stop an Arachnos guy from getting away and did not realize he was going to be running through the mission and I might miss him as he ran by.

 

Again, I am ok with there being such missions, and would be fine playing them. They are fun. And a nice change. But they are so, so rare, that when they do get assigned I almost never realize it until I have failed them. All because 99% of the missions are of type "A" and when you get a "B" 1% of the time you are usually on autopilot. And there is never any indicator to show it. THAT is incredibly frustrating.

[Carnifax]

17 minutes ago, quixoteprog said:

I beg to differ. Most recent example I can recall was a mission to save some Rikti diplomats in the War Zone who had been kidnapped by Nemesis. The first one I rescued was some kind of "Chief Mentalist" or something who wanted to help attack stuff; which is fine. But because it was F***ing Nemesis there were snipers which meant he aggroed 2-3 spawns that once and wound up dying. The instant that happened I was kicked out of the mission and it failed. That is fine. But it should have spelled that out in the mission because I would have been much more cautious in how I aggroed stuff. Doing corner pulls and stuff. I was just careless, but in 99% of the missions you can BE careless.

 

I'll second this. I was doing a different RWZ mission yesterday on a (newly formed fledgling team which I'd cobbled together) and the first spawn (or maybe two close together) we hit gave us a few Faceplants followed almost immediately by a Mission Failed. Was Rikti rather than Nemises so there's at least 2 RWZ missions with it there. 

 

I've also seen Lady "AggroBot" Grey get herself killed in that mission where you are supposed to rescue her then lead her to something, recently. 

 

So sadly there's still a few missions where it happens and it's really annoying. 

 

 

[TyrantMikey]

2 hours ago, Carnifax said:

I've also seen Lady "AggroBot" Grey get herself killed in that mission where you are supposed to rescue her then lead her to something, recently. 

Do not even mention that...that...WOMAN to me.

 

She is the most useless, infuriating, needlessly arrogant NPC in the game. I'm quite certain she and Fusionette were spawned from the same dirty petri dish.

Edited November 8, 2019 by TyrantMikey

[Twisted Toon]

Are you sure she's not Fussionette's mother...and still has stuff to teach her daughter?

[Lost Ninja]

On 11/7/2019 at 12:12 PM, boggo2300 said:

I hate the street sweeping mishes, you either get stuck with mobs too high a level, or much worse too low, so you are robbed of rewards for that mish!

Or there are so few of the mobs you need in the places you can find them you need to keep hitting the same spawn over and over. (Shadow Shard hunts and PI hunts seem to have this issue a lot.)

[boggo2300]

8 hours ago, quixoteprog said:

I beg to differ. Most recent example I can recall was a mission to save some Rikti diplomats in the War Zone who had been kidnapped by Nemesis. The first one I rescued was some kind of "Chief Mentalist" or something who wanted to help attack stuff; which is fine. But because it was F***ing Nemesis there were snipers which meant he aggroed 2-3 spawns that once and wound up dying. The instant that happened I was kicked out of the mission and it failed. That is fine. But it should have spelled that out in the mission because I would have been much more cautious in how I aggroed stuff. Doing corner pulls and stuff. I was just careless, but in 99% of the missions you can BE careless.

 

I would amend number 3, (not just to correct my typo, "dies" instead of "does") but to add "if it escapes" as well. Since I had one mission where I was supposed to stop an Arachnos guy from getting away and did not realize he was going to be running through the mission and I might miss him as he ran by.

 

Again, I am ok with there being such missions, and would be fine playing them. They are fun. And a nice change. But they are so, so rare, that when they do get assigned I almost never realize it until I have failed them. All because 99% of the missions are of type "A" and when you get a "B" 1% of the time you are usually on autopilot. And there is never any indicator to show it. THAT is incredibly frustrating.

OK, fair enough there may be missions they missed fixing, the majority of ones I've noticed the Aggro Magnet nutjob gets to zero health, collapses and then after a minute or two stands back up to cause more suffering in the mish, they may even have left some deliberately unfixed to increase the "difficulty" the live Devs did have some very strange ideas sometims

[boggo2300]

9 minutes ago, Lost Ninja said:

Or there are so few of the mobs you need in the places you can find them you need to keep hitting the same spawn over and over. (Shadow Shard hunts and PI hunts seem to have this issue a lot.)

Vahz in Steel!!!!  there are like 3 freakin' mobs along the base of the war wall   AAAAARRGH

[Eva Destruction]

On 11/5/2019 at 7:42 PM, MTeague said:

"World Wide Red" is probably one of the best mission arcs I've seen in the entire game, in AE or not.  Pratoria or vanilla.  It's full of Malta sure, but it's awesome story-wise and people should really take the time to treat themselves to it and READ IT some day.  

 

It's FAR longer than 5 missions. It's longer than some task forces I've been on.  I don't care. 

Maybe you prefer short paperbacks.  Some of us enjoy long and complex stories. 

 

World Wide Red could be condensed down a bit without losing anything, IMO.  There are too many defeat-alls, some of them on big maps, and of course like a lot of old-skool arcs it sends you all over the city.  It needs to be long to tell the story, but it doesn't need to be as long as it is.

 

14 hours ago, quixoteprog said:

I would amend number 3, (not just to correct my typo, "dies" instead of "does") but to add "if it escapes" as well. Since I had one mission where I was supposed to stop an Arachnos guy from getting away and did not realize he was going to be running through the mission and I might miss him as he ran by.

 

Again, I am ok with there being such missions, and would be fine playing them. They are fun. And a nice change. But they are so, so rare, that when they do get assigned I almost never realize it until I have failed them. All because 99% of the missions are of type "A" and when you get a "B" 1% of the time you are usually on autopilot. And there is never any indicator to show it. THAT is incredibly frustrating.

The mission text does tell you that you can't let the guy escape, but there's nothing there to indicate that the mission will fail if you do and it's not just flavor text.  But the devs seem to have decided that nobody likes those missions, since I can't think of any after vanilla CoV....except that one where you have to stop Crimson from escaping.  He is an Archvillain with Quickness.  One last F-you to villains before they retired "stop enemy from escaping" missions forever.

[EmmySky]

5 hours ago, boggo2300 said:

Vahz in Steel!!!!  there are like 3 freakin' mobs along the base of the war wall   AAAAARRGH

When I am sweeping steel I find tons of vahz (I hate them) but when I need them they all just entered witsec or something cuz they are poof gone.

[boggo2300]

3 minutes ago, EmmySky said:

When I am sweeping steel I find tons of vahz (I hate them) but when I need them they all just entered witsec or something cuz they are poof gone.

Exactly this, it's like they know...😨

[quixoteprog]

1 hour ago, Eva Destruction said:

The mission text does tell you that you can't let the guy escape, but there's nothing there to indicate that the mission will fail if you do and it's not just flavor text.  But the devs seem to have decided that nobody likes those missions, since I can't think of any after vanilla CoV....except that one where you have to stop Crimson from escaping.  He is an Archvillain with Quickness.  One last F-you to villains before they retired "stop enemy from escaping" missions forever.

I can see why people would not like them. It ticked me off quite a bit. Especially since I actually remembered reading that I had to catch the guy, and put two and to together, but only AFTER I saw him run by me while I was fighting an unrelated spawn and couldn't get away to catch him. I am cool with adding twists to a mission and even with making the mission difficult by not explicitly calling out what exactly you need to do in order to succeed. But your decisions on a mission and the content of the text makes a difference so very RARELY that when you get one where it actually DOES you will never notice.

 

They can put all the twists and turns they want in a mission and I would be happy to run them, as long as they are distinguished from the run of the mill missions where you travel to the entrance and begin engaging mobs and clicking on items until everything on the map(s) are inert.

[Lost Ninja]

5 hours ago, quixoteprog said:

They can put all the twists and turns they want in a mission and I would be happy to run them, as long as they are distinguished from the run of the mill missions where you travel to the entrance and begin engaging mobs and clicking on items until everything on the map(s) are inert.

Or it became the norm rather than the exception. More interesting missions would be good.

[Eva Destruction]

10 hours ago, quixoteprog said:

I can see why people would not like them. It ticked me off quite a bit. Especially since I actually remembered reading that I had to catch the guy, and put two and to together, but only AFTER I saw him run by me while I was fighting an unrelated spawn and couldn't get away to catch him. I am cool with adding twists to a mission and even with making the mission difficult by not explicitly calling out what exactly you need to do in order to succeed. But your decisions on a mission and the content of the text makes a difference so very RARELY that when you get one where it actually DOES you will never notice.

 

They can put all the twists and turns they want in a mission and I would be happy to run them, as long as they are distinguished from the run of the mill missions where you travel to the entrance and begin engaging mobs and clicking on items until everything on the map(s) are inert.

In the newer missions they color-code the text that is actually relevant to the mission objectives, which makes a huge difference, but nobody thought to go back and do that to some of the older content.

 

A possible suggestion for the Homecoming team....

[boggo2300]

16 hours ago, quixoteprog said:

I can see why people would not like them. It ticked me off quite a bit. Especially since I actually remembered reading that I had to catch the guy, and put two and to together, but only AFTER I saw him run by me while I was fighting an unrelated spawn and couldn't get away to catch him. I am cool with adding twists to a mission and even with making the mission difficult by not explicitly calling out what exactly you need to do in order to succeed. But your decisions on a mission and the content of the text makes a difference so very RARELY that when you get one where it actually DOES you will never notice.

 

They can put all the twists and turns they want in a mission and I would be happy to run them, as long as they are distinguished from the run of the mill missions where you travel to the entrance and begin engaging mobs and clicking on items until everything on the map(s) are inert.

even worse than that, if the escapee is near a wall and you can trigger him when you are in another room and he escapes without you ever seeing him at all!! (I just had that happen to me this week, the wound is still sore)