So how are mission doors selected?

[RikOz]

Discounting doors that are always the same for specific missions - like the 3rd mission in Montague's arc where you rescue that Rikti is always through the same door - how does the game select which door to attach to a mission?

 

I'm mostly talking about randomized missions, such as radio/paper missions, or alignment missions, or just any general non-arc mission. For these, I start noticing that the same doors keep getting used over and over and over. We've all had those situations where we exit a mission, get the next mission, and get sent right back through the same door we just came out of, and now that warehouse is a Council base,

 

There are literally thousands of clickable doors in the game, and yet missions keep sending us to the same buildings, and the vast majority of the doors go completely unused.

[Force Redux]

I'm not sure. There are lots of doorways I'd love to see used.

 

There's a door in a small island off Mercy near the Chum badge I've never seen used, for example. 

Edited February 18, 2020 by Force Redux

[SeraphimKensai]

I would speculate that there are lists of potential mission doors that one is assigned to each mission. Some lists are comprised of only only door, causing some missions to have a fixed door. Otherwise I imagine the game chooses a random integer that corresponds to a door on the assigned list.for each mission.

 

Mind you that's speculation and something I never have bothered to actually check out, but it's how I'd go about assigning doors as it'd be quicker than picking static doors for each mission.

[Heraclea]

When running a very old mission on a very old arc (The Tsoo Coup) I was sent to a door in Kallisti Wharf.  This struck me as odd. 

[siolfir]

24 minutes ago, SeraphimKensai said:

I would speculate that there are lists of potential mission doors that one is assigned to each mission. Some lists are comprised of only only door, causing some missions to have a fixed door. Otherwise I imagine the game chooses a random integer that corresponds to a door on the assigned list.for each mission.

 

Mind you that's speculation and something I never have bothered to actually check out, but it's how I'd go about assigning doors as it'd be quicker than picking static doors for each mission.

It's probably something like this, with an exception added so that any time you have a short, single-room mission in Nerva (like the Rob the Chum Bucket, for example) you will be sent to Thorn Isle.

[quixoteprog]

Not sure how it happens, but it sure is weird when you get a mismatch. I've had several mission where a cave door lead to an office interior mission map, or a warehouse. That being the case I would imagine that the designer of the mission assigns a list of possible mission doors on creation. It could be one, it could be fifty. When the mission gets assigned the game selects one of those from its list. If the designer creates a cave mission map and then accidentally adds a door to an office building to his list, then you will suffer a bit of a "WTF?" moment on entry.

 

 

[KC4800]

34 minutes ago, Heraclea said:

When running a very old mission on a very old arc (The Tsoo Coup) I was sent to a door in Kallisti Wharf.  This struck me as odd. 

This has happened to me a few times as well. Always in Old Slough though. (Hey, that rhymes!)

[DR_Mechano]

3 minutes ago, KC4800 said:

This has happened to me a few times as well. Always in Old Slough though. (Hey, that rhymes!)

As an Englishman it took me to work out how Slough rhymes with Though...since here that spelling is used for a place name and the pronunciation of it is completely different to how its written since it's pronounced as Slau. This has been your 'British English is kinda weird' segment for the day.

[KC4800]

Part of the game I enjoy. 

 

Old slaw - Old Slow - Old Sluff could be all three?

 

Tahlos or Taylos.

Depends on who's saying it. 🙂

[siolfir]

3 minutes ago, DR_Mechano said:

As an Englishman it took me to work out how Slough rhymes with Though...since here that spelling is used for a place name and the pronunciation of it is completely different to how its written since it's pronounced as Slau. This has been your 'British English is kinda weird' segment for the day.

Wait, so it doesn't rhyme with tough? This has been your "it's not specifically British English, it's just English that's weird" segment for the day.

 

..and sniped by @KC4800 while I was writing this.

[Frostbiter]

31 minutes ago, quixoteprog said:

Not sure how it happens, but it sure is weird when you get a mismatch. I've had several mission where a cave door lead to an office interior mission map, or a warehouse. That being the case I would imagine that the designer of the mission assigns a list of possible mission doors on creation. It could be one, it could be fifty. When the mission gets assigned the game selects one of those from its list. If the designer creates a cave mission map and then accidentally adds a door to an office building to his list, then you will suffer a bit of a "WTF?" moment on entry.

 

 

Most of the time when that happens the mission intro text (you know, the pop-up that I suspect most people skip) has some flavor text that explains the cave led you out to an office building. Kind of weak I know but it's there.

[VileTerror]

I once had an Atlas Park Starter Contact give me a mission in Night Ward.

[0th Power]

9 minutes ago, VileTerror said:

I once had an Atlas Park Starter Contact give me a mission in Night Ward.

They didn't like you

[Heraclea]

There does seem to be a correspondence between mission maps and door types: warehouse, lab, and office maps go to building doors.  Blue  and brown caves, Council caves, and Oranbega get stone doors.  Now you know why there are so many minor islands in Talos.  All that fill dirt has to go somewhere. 

[Snarky]

The game carefully looks over the team   If everyone is deemed worthy a reasonable door is selected. If however someone is not worthy the furthest door possible is selected. I bave been on some Citadels where there were very unworthy teammates (it obviously wasnt me). And we had miles of commutes every mission

Edited February 18, 2020 by Snarky

[Marine X]

One of the very first missions in Atlas Park I always get sent on sends you to the same Townhouse every time that is a warehouse map once inside. It is an old mission from Antonio Nash that was reassigned after shutdown to Prince Kiros Nandelu I believe, because even though Nash is still in the same spot he doesn't give out missions on Homecoming, but the Prince standing behind him does. I don't remember the mis-match between the door and the map from Live, and I did those arcs on almost every toon.

Always a Mutant. ( Mutant Marine Corps SG on Virtue ).

[RikOz]

8 hours ago, SeraphimKensai said:

I would speculate that there are lists of potential mission doors that one is assigned to each mission. Some lists are comprised of only only door, causing some missions to have a fixed door. Otherwise I imagine the game chooses a random integer that corresponds to a door on the assigned list.for each mission.

 

Mind you that's speculation and something I never have bothered to actually check out, but it's how I'd go about assigning doors as it'd be quicker than picking static doors for each mission.

Yeah, I agree that picking a static door for each mission would be an unnecessary extra effort, given that, for the majority of missions, it ultimately doesn't matter which specific door on which specific building the mission happens in. For buildings, the only real reason I could see to specify a particular door would be those missions that name a specific company. Like, the DE are attacking a Yellow Rose Cosmetics office, and it makes sense that Yellow Rose's office isn't randomly moving around the city. But when the mission just mentions "an abandoned office", the mission could point to literally any "office building" in the zone, yet the same handful of buildings keep getting used while others are mostly ignored.

 

For missions that are truly meant to be random, your idea of a list to choose from makes sense, but if that is being done in-game, it would seem that each mission is assigned, say, a "range" of door IDs to choose from, rather than the entire list of suitable doors, and whoever was selecting that range of IDs was being "lazy" and just kept selecting a few from the top of the list. I was recently working a villain through Sharkhead Isle missions, and became convinced that there is one, and only one cave entrance on that island, because literally every cave mission sent me to the same door. I did later confirm that there are multiple cave entrances, but that was by randomly seeing them while doing something else, not by being pointed to them by missions.

 

If I were designing the system, I would set up each zone like so,:

 

The "Forbidden" Doors: No mission maps can be accessed from certain, specific doors, unless the mission specifically involves the relevant building by name. This list would include the doors of City Hall, Icon, Hospital, AE, Vanguard HQ, Vault Reserve, or any building that counts as a Day Job location. Basically, any building that players can already enter freely without spawning an instance. This already seems to be the situation for these buildings/doors.

 

Then, separate lists of doors by type: Office, Warehouse, Sewer, or Cave (door types, not map types, as "Office" doors can open into both "office" and "laboratory" maps, and "Cave" doors can open into any kind of cave/Oranbega map). Each of these lists would include every door of that type, except for those that appear on the "Forbidden" list, and upon mission acceptance, the game would randomly select a door from the entire list.

 

If necessary, the list of available doors could then be limited by further exceptions. For example, in zones with a large level range, exclude doors that are in a part of the zone that is too high-level. So, say, don't send a level 10 hero to a door in Steel Canyon North where they're likely to be ganked by level 19 Outcasts or Tsoo as they approach the door. This is accomplished by the door IDs themselves including a code corresponding to their location's level range.

 

Of course, there are some zones/doors that should be excluded from certain missions simply for logical reasons (like the mission that has the Clockwork attacking a recycling drive - nobody in their right mind would hold a recycling drive in an unsafe, collapsing building in Faultline or Boomtown, yet that mission has sent me to both of those zones) but that is outside of my original question.

 

If these random missions are, indeed, supposed to be selecting a door from the complete list of appropriate door types, they there is probably a fault in the RNG algorithm that is resulting in some door IDs being ignored.

Edited February 18, 2020 by RikOz

[Doc_Scorpion]

49 minutes ago, RikOz said:

If necessary, the list of available doors could then be limited by further exceptions. For example, in zones with a large level range, exclude doors that are in a part of the zone that is too high-level. So, say, don't send a level 10 hero to a door in Steel Canyon North where they're likely to be ganked by level 19 Outcasts or Tsoo as they approach the door. This is accomplished by the door IDs themselves including a code corresponding to their location's level range.

Ah...  memories and Stockholm Syndrome of The Hollows back in the day...

[tremor3258]

8 hours ago, VileTerror said:

I once had an Atlas Park Starter Contact give me a mission in Night Ward.

You should have been nicer to them.

 

I've had missions where I'm at 50 from old-school contacts decide Dark Astoria was a good place to go.  Why the Carnival of Shadows was throwing a party a few blocks from a god of death I will never know.

[Pengatron]

I think only certain doors, cave entrances, sewer entrances, and such are flagged as potential mission entry points.

Having done tons of PI radio missions I have noticed there are only a couple dozen or so of entry points and I see the same ones coming up many times.

 

There are many more that are just part of the "scenery" but are not used for missions.

 

[RikOz]

16 minutes ago, Pengatron said:

I think only certain doors, cave entrances, sewer entrances, and such are flagged as potential mission entry points.

Having done tons of PI radio missions I have noticed there are only a couple dozen or so of entry points and I see the same ones coming up many times.

 

There are many more that are just part of the "scenery" but are not used for missions.

 

Now that you mention it, I suspect some of them are tied to specific mission types. I was doing a bunch of Kings Row radio missions on more than one character, and I noticed that several of those sent me to the same door of a warehouse in the far southeast corner of the zone. I can't recall any other mission type sending me to that building.

[Techwright]

Ah, time for my quarterly grumble at the fact that half the missions in Brickstown are behind just two doors in an underground maintenance area.  I may have the percentage a bit low.

[srmalloy]

4 hours ago, Marine X said:

One of the very first missions in Atlas Park I always get sent on sends you to the same Townhouse every time that is a warehouse map once inside.

There are four of these that I have gotten. Two of them send you to the eastern and southern doors of the brownstone just W of Atlas Park; the other two send you to the back door of the brownstone down toward the SW corner of Atlas, with a small plaza between it and the wall dividing it from the Anderson Industrial region at the extreme W. The missions variously come from the Tech, Magic, and Natural contacts downstairs in City Hall (Rick Davies, Azuria, and I forget the third off the top of my head).

 

3 hours ago, RikOz said:

Then, separate lists of doors by type: Office, Warehouse, Sewer, or Cave (door types, not map types, as "Office" doors can open into both "office" and "laboratory" maps, and "Cave" doors can open into any kind of cave/Oranbega map). Each of these lists would include every door of that type, except for those that appear on the "Forbidden" list, and upon mission acceptance, the game would randomly select a door from the entire list.

You're missing a type. Back on live, I received several missions -- which always seemed to be located in south IP -- where I would enter the warehouse door where the mission was located and find myself in a Council/5th cave map, and the mission-entry popup would talk about how I found this secret entrance into the base inside the warehouse.

 

3 hours ago, RikOz said:

Of course, there are some zones/doors that should be excluded from certain missions simply for logical reasons (like the mission that has the Clockwork attacking a recycling drive - nobody in their right mind would hold a recycling drive in an unsafe, collapsing building in Faultline or Boomtown, yet that mission has sent me to both of those zones) but that is outside of my original question.

One of these back on live was the "Be guest of honor at an SF convention" mission that you got from a contact in Brickstown; it always sent you to a warehouse in Crey's Folly -- an utterly unbelievable location. When I got the same mission on HC, it sent me to Atlas; much more believable. Connected to this, one of the things I'd like to see happen with missions is to allow for missions that show one description until you enter the mission, then it changes to the real mission description. Take the "guest of honor" mission above. You read the mission text, it's getting to be feted at a con; the moment you take it, the mission goal in your nav window is "Defeat all Rikti in office". Now, you know that when you get a cushy mission like appearing at a con, that's not the way it's going to go down, but it would be nice to preserve the illusion until you actually enter the mission.

[Doc_Scorpion]

10 minutes ago, Techwright said:

Ah, time for my quarterly grumble at the fact that half the missions in Brickstown are behind just two doors in an underground maintenance area.  I may have the percentage a bit low.

Two doors, one of which is deep inside a maze.  And there's lvl 35 Council almost invariably lurking about on the street and at the entrance to the maze.

[RikOz]

11 minutes ago, srmalloy said:

Now, you know that when you get a cushy mission like appearing at a con, that's not the way it's going to go down, but it would be nice to preserve the illusion until you actually enter the mission.

Yeah, they actually did this right with Aaron Thiery's first mission, which starts out "Defeat 15 Hellions", and as you approach the area there are Arachnos instead of Hellions, and the mission window text changes accordingly. Although that one is open-world, not in an instance.

 

(Funny you should mention a con, though. One of my characters' backstory is that she was attending a con, cosplaying as a Longbow agent, when it turned out that the group of Skulls cosplayers weren't actually cosplayers and they started shooting the place up.)