Bad Mission Design 101.

[MTeague]

2 hours ago, Luminara said:

I clear maps.  I don't speed run.  The only speed I care about, I've ever cared about, is how fast I can jump. 

Absolutely, right there with you. 

 

2 hours ago, Luminara said:

What I also know is that the timer doesn't create tension or drama, or add to the story.  Being locked into that content for the duration of the countdown isn't exciting, it's tedious.  The waves don't come any faster as the timer counts down.  They don't spawn more difficult enemies the closer it comes to zero. 

Once upon a time, I saw this mission wipe teams. We're talking before IO's.  SO's only.  No inherent fitness.  And probably wasn't the best config'd team.

The first few waves?  Easy Peasy.

Next few? Easy Peasy.

Then people starting running out of END.

And kill speed plummetted. 

And Red Caps were diving into the earth and promoting themselves to Lieutenants and Bosses, because we couldn't kill them fast enough while scrapping the bottom of the barrel in need of END.

It hit a point of no return when there were over 8 bosses at once, throwing gnomes on our heads to blind us and dogpiling on. 

 

Later on, with a team that was actually prepped for that mission, and which had sufficient boosts to END recovery (Empath + Rad defenders), that team stomped the bejeezus out of it. 

 

Now, today?  With IO's?  Panacea Procs and Perf Shifter Proc's being almost standard?  Not so much.  

Now, it's largely a joke. You're not going to hit a point where you start hemmoraging END and suddenly everyone's DPS hits the floor.

But once upon a time? It was possible.

[Sakura Tenshi]

16 hours ago, FoulVileTerror said:

Something like this, @Sakura Tenshi?

 

Mission Start:

All enemies start together in a large army formation.

 

Time Elapsed 30 Seconds:

Enemies fan out to their defensive locations.

 

And then after that, the little pocket mobs attempt to pass through the objective, as normal.

 

 

If that's accurate, the idea's neat . . . though I think it might be a little too late to implement on this particular mission.

Maybe hold it in reserve for some new content?

Yeah, pretty much, and I don't think it's ever too late to update a mission, but if you're going to update a mission it might be better to give the zone a bit of an update overall.

 

Still bugs me that the Cabal is the only Croatoa mob that has more than three critters.

[Judasace]

10 minutes ago, Sakura Tenshi said:

Yeah, pretty much, and I don't think it's ever too late to update a mission, but if you're going to update a mission it might be better to give the zone a bit of an update overall.

 

Still bugs me that the Cabal is the only Croatoa mob that has more than three critters.

I think after almost a decade in the grave, pirate servers run on donations and volunteer, part time developers that don't have the experience to untangle the original "spaghetti" code, and literally thousands of other things they could do that would improve the game for a broader group of people makes it objectively "too late" to update individual missions that aren't actually game breaking.

[Greycat]

2 hours ago, Judasace said:

I think after almost a decade in the grave, pirate servers run on donations and volunteer, part time developers that don't have the experience to untangle the original "spaghetti" code, and literally thousands of other things they could do that would improve the game for a broader group of people makes it objectively "too late" to update individual missions that aren't actually game breaking.

I ... think you'd be surprised at the experience and what people can untangle, if you look at it. Heck, the progress done during the "dead" years was via reverse engineering what was out there. Part of the issue isn't just code, but that the tools needed to do some things aren't available, as I recall.

[Clave Dark 5]

Yeah, I often don't pay much attention to the stories and arcs etc. in the game, but I saw your posted picture and took a wild and correct guess about which mission you were going to excoriate. 

 

And I will see you and raise you with the following:  I don't mind escort missions... except this one.  I started it before bed and turns out it's that Johnny Sonata one "Stop the Wailers from disrupting the ritual" which requires you to escort four Mu Mystics to some obelisk.  Oh yeah, and you have to find each one and escort them across a map of St. Martial which feels like it's two miles wide on a side. 

 

But wait, there's more!!  Check this from the wiki for this mission:

 

Quote Ambush! Rescuing a Mu Mystic will result in three waves of ambushes by Wailers, resulting in a total of twelve ambushes. Random Wailer ambush: ""Kiiiiiiill Theeeeem!" Taking a Mu Mystic to the obelisk will result in four silent waves of auto-lock-on ambushes of Wailers, who have the ability to follow you all over the map, resulting in a total of sixteen ambushes, combined with the above will be a grand total of twenty-eight ambushes (!) for one single mission. I was playing solo.  A stalker too, ha ha on me!  My fault for starting it before bed, and for sticking around through it, but I will never do this mission again either.   "Kiiiiiiill Theeeeem!" indeed.

[Lines]

I love that mission Cli--

 

Wait, Clave?

 

I've been reading your name as Clive since forever. I'mma call you Clive. Too used to it.

 

I love that mission, Clive! 🙂

[Clave Dark 5]

12 minutes ago, Lines said:

I love that mission Cli--

 

Wait, Clave?

 

I've been reading your name as Clive since forever. I'mma call you Clive. Too used to it.

 

I love that mission, Clive! 🙂

I get that a lot ha ha.  What I do NOT get is love for that mission!

[Lines]

7 minutes ago, Clave Dark 5 said:

I get that a lot ha ha.  What I do NOT get is love for that mission!

I think it's because I like St Martial a lot, especially the Golden Giza and the weird mysticism around it (though it would be a bit dream of mine to remodel the interior). I also know what I'm in for with that mission and just relax into it. It feels like it works, at least, which is more than can be said for the Croatoa finale.

 

Last time I did it was on a DB/Ninja scrapper, who had the stealth/escort issues. That was a little annoying. But all the ambushes consolidated into two MASSIVE groups and I had the best time testing the limits of that character slaughtering them all.

 

Edit: Also I like the chilled out Mu guy who just wanted to go home and relax in front of the TV.

Edited September 29, 2020 by Lines

[tidge]

The OP missions have bad design elements, but the ones that I absolutely hate are the "stop x from escaping"... and the character has a jetpack flying at Mach 1 to the elevators. Miss him and he's escaped, mission fail. I'm blanking on the contact name, but it is a redside arc in the 30's I think.

 

Missions which are almost as bad are the painful 'escort/rescue' (see Mu Mystics above, and also the 'escort the Arachnos agents from the Shadow Shard') especially as a stalker.

 

 

[UltraAlt]

On 9/26/2020 at 12:14 PM, Luminara said:

... Escorts are bad mission design in general...

That statement is an opinion and not a fact.

 

Simply because you don't like... let's say "Kill All" missions doesn't mean that they are bad game design.

 

Rescuing a kidnap victim or taking a witness to safety is very much in the super-hero cannon. It is logical game design.

 

I can see someone that wants to be stealthy all the time not wanting to have to "decloak" and risk their exposure to enemies, but that is life.

Learn to work around it.

 

Deal with it the same way you would a "kill all" if you are all stealthed up. You still have to "arrest" them, but you do it your own way.

 

Treat the escort the same way.

 

What's going to happen?

Worried about getting ambushed on the way to the door?

I guess you know an ambush is coming.

They rarely will kill an escorted NPC.

So how would you deal with mobs when you didn't have an escorted NPC?

Cloak up and deal with the ambush the same way you would any other mob. You can decloak after the mobs are dealt with in order to lead out the escorted NPC.

 

Different sort of mission parameters are there to mix up the game play.

I'm glad that there are escort missions. I like rescuing people from harm's way.

[UltraAlt]

On 9/26/2020 at 12:46 PM, Frostbiter said:

The one I truly hate is the mission where you have to stop so many Fir Bolg from entering the menhir ring. There's been an AI change that makes them not always stop when one of them takes damage anymore. Pure frustration if you're primarily single target attacks..

Sounds like you might need to team up with a someone with AOEs.

 

City of Heroes was designed to be a game that promotes building teams and co-operation between team members.

 

I understand that there are solo players. I solo play some myself, but some missions require help ... those with AV's for example.

 

To me that mission is like protecting a football/soccer goal. And, yeah, having someone with AOEs to hold them down from escaping until they can be eliminated is what that mission is all about.

 

The thing is that people are hesitant to lead a team.

On the flipside, many will tend to join a team ... especially if you yell out "I need help doing/with [insert info here]".

 

Asking for help happens all the time in the /help channel.

Helping other people is what heroes do.

For some of us, that is why we play this game.

[Frostbiter]

Just now, UltraAlt said:

Sounds like you might need to team up with a someone with AOEs.

 

City of Heroes was designed to be a game that promotes building teams and co-operation between team members.

 

I understand that there are solo players. I solo play some myself, but some missions require help ... those with AV's for example.

 

To me that mission is like protecting a football/soccer goal. And, yeah, having someone with AOEs to hold them down from escaping until they can be eliminated is what that mission is all about.

 

The thing is that people are hesitant to lead a team.

On the flipside, many will tend to join a team ... especially if you yell out "I need help doing/with [insert info here]".

 

Asking for help happens all the time in the /help channel.

Helping other people is what heroes do.

For some of us, that is why we play this game.

Make me do anything. Go on.

 

If no one has figured it out yet, assume I am hostile to the assumption that A) I need help and B) I don't know what I'm doing.

[Luminara]

3 hours ago, UltraAlt said:

That statement is an opinion and not a fact.

 

Simply because you don't like... let's say "Kill All" missions doesn't mean that they are bad game design.

 

Rescuing a kidnap victim or taking a witness to safety is very much in the super-hero cannon. It is logical game design.

 

Design can be thematically appropriate and still bad.  A mechanic which randomly deleted 50% of all player characters in a Marvel game would be thematic.  It would also be bad design.

 

Try again.

[Greycat]

3 hours ago, UltraAlt said:

Sounds like you might need to team up with a someone with AOEs.

You don't, though it doesn't hurt, admittedly. This mission is easily soloable. Depending, I suppose, on your settings - I'll only run this at base settings. Honestly I wouldn't do it with *more* than two people max. More than that = larger mobs = more chance to escape.

 

Honestly, I always look forward to this mission. It's one of my favourites.

[Lines]

3 hours ago, UltraAlt said:

That statement is an opinion and not a fact.

I don't want to put words in Lumi's mouth, but I read it as "Escort missions are badly designed", rather than "The concept of saving citizens is a bad one".

 

It more calls into question the mechanical AI pathing issues that CoH is famous for. It's easy to imagine a better execution of those sorts of missions.

 

Edit: The one that really grinds me is from that same Johnny Sonata arc, where you need to kidnap Akarist from the Shadow Shard.

He struggles to path over the terrain, and then when you lose him he'll say "And here I am left to my own devices. There are few things as depressing as an incompetant kidnapping."

Mate, I'm not the one who's confused by a slight incline!

Edited September 29, 2020 by Lines

[Kai Moon]

Faathim TF busted for bad mission design. They can't even deny what they did here.

 

Credit to https://youtu.be/nGYcMriYDKQ?t=1450 not my video

[jubakumbi]

There are examples of both awesome and terrible 'mechanical mission design' in CoH, from differing tools over the years to so many different people working on it, IMO.

21 minutes ago, Lines said:

I don't want to put words in Lumi's mouth, but I read it as "Escort missions are badly designed", rather than "The concept of saving citizens is a bad one".

 

It more calls into question the mechanical AI pathing issues that CoH is famous for. It's easy to imagine a better execution of those sorts of missions.

This is my POV here.

 

I think the idea of rescuing and escorting is awesome, but the mechanics in CoH are not the best for it, or have not at least been levered as well as they could be, IMO.

How many times in comics has the person being rescued carried the plot further? The rescues/escorts could be so much more well done with modern tech.

 

The forced wait times are something in even today's games, but the wait can be purchased away, so it's still a 'thing'.

Not a big fan of 'make me stand here' types of wait timers myself.

I would think if anything, the actual timer could be changed.

 

Good content is hard to make. So much of it is subjective and so many people are not always objective when it comes to content that evokes emotion.

I was never a fan of the zone, TBH, so I have no thoughts on the minutiae beyond that.

 

3 hours ago, Frostbiter said:

If no one has figured it out yet, assume I am hostile to the assumption that A) I need help and B) I don't know what I'm doing.

 

TBH, from my POV, you pretty much always just seem hostile and anyone that dares disagree with you, you just stop interacting with ... it's fun to watch though!

[MTeague]

Escort missions aren't especially irksome to me on a stalker.  

But I do admit, ever since the gloriousness that is Assassin's Focus, I kind of build my Stalkers as Scrappers. 

They still have the OPTION to use hide, for particularly nasty openers, but most of the time, they're unhid, diving into piles of foes and doing the "stab stab stab Stab Stab Stab STAB STAB STAB" bit

 

Once in awhile they Pay The Price. But generally they wreck face. And the /Regen stalker pretty much always ends every fight at max health and laughes evilly as he dives into the next group.  The defense based ones can be a bit more touch-and-go, but the IO procs give them very good maintence heals as they go.

Edited September 29, 2020 by MTeague

[Frostbiter]

1 minute ago, jubakumbi said:

There are examples of both awesome and terrible 'mechanical mission design' in CoH, from differing tools over the years to so many different people working on it, IMO.

This is my POV here.

 

I think the idea of rescuing and escorting is awesome, but the mechanics in CoH are not the best for it, or have not at least been levered as well as they could be, IMO.

How many times in comics has the person being rescued carried the plot further? The rescues/escorts could be so much more well done with modern tech.

 

The forced wait times are something in even today's games, but the wait can be purchased away, so it's still a 'thing'.

Not a big fan of 'make me stand here' types of wait timers myself.

I would think if anything, the actual timer could be changed.

 

Good content is hard to make. So much of it is subjective and so many people are not always objective when it comes to content that evokes emotion.

I was never a fan of the zone, TBH, so I have no thoughts on the minutiae beyond that.

 

 

TBH, from my POV, you pretty much always just seem hostile and anyone that dares disagree with you, you just stop interacting with ... it's fun to watch though!

How should I put this? I'm military trained in diplomacy. As for dropping out of a bad conversation? Yeah I do that.

[srmalloy]

On 9/29/2020 at 5:05 AM, tidge said:

The OP missions have bad design elements, but the ones that I absolutely hate are the "stop x from escaping"... and the character has a jetpack flying at Mach 1 to the elevators. Miss him and he's escaped, mission fail. I'm blanking on the contact name, but it is a redside arc in the 30's I think.

The ones I've gotten that are in office maps, I've learned to stop when I get out of an elevator and watch the chat window, because the boss says something panicky when I reach the right floor, which tells me that he's started to run. I'll move a bit up the hall and wait for him to come in range, then use all my movement-obstructive attacks (holds, I mobs, KB, etc) to pin him down while I defeat him.

 

More annoying is a Family mission, where you have to stop the boss -- I think his name is hard-coded as 'Draco' -- from escaping. The map is a warehouse map, and invariably has two routes to the end room, so it's a crapshoot which one he'll take when he bugs out, and you have to defeat mobs into at least one of those routes to get him to bolt. I had one instance of this mission where the map had two separate double-path sections, and I waited at the place where the paths closest to the end room came back together, and he somehow spawned past me at the other split, because he escaped without my ever seeing him.

[Greycat]

Rgh. Yeah, those "keep X from escaping," where they can spawn a room away from an elevator (and seem to get to it right as you're getting out) - those are generally poor. Won't argue with those.

 

As far as escorts - there are a lot of AI and perception issues people kind of learn to work around. If I'm kidnapping someone redside, I'm not going to have them casually walk along with me - they're coming with me, now, not getting a chance to wander off. But AI pathing.. ugh. Plus, of course, they don't work with stealth very well - so someone running (say) steamy mist, who's just used to running it, can make it more frustrating for a team that doesn't notice they're getting stealthed. And then there's combat "assistants" (the Gaussian mission to rescue negotiators comes to mind here.) They *love* getting themselves killed. Lady Jane is notorious for this - but easy to work past (basically pull her mob somewhere else, fight to the chest, and *don't come back for her until everything's cleared* so she can't do anything but follow you.) The rescue negotiators one? They're delicate, often up front and/or in packs... I've recently started fighting to (and around) them, escorting them gently to the front (fighting the ambushes,) then running like hell so I lose them in the front room and they can't die. Annoying mission.

[Luminara]

I slept until 6 a.m. this morning, which is rare.  I'm normally up some time between 2 a.m. and 4 a.m., despite going to bed at 10 p.m.  So I didn't have much time to play.  Having only experienced the First/Night Ward content once, on the Grav/TA controller I started when I bought this laptop, I figured I'd take Antianeira there and see how things went.

 

And in the very first mission, the damned dog escort managed to get lost when I went around a corner.  I wasn't even moving quickly (I don't have most of my +Movement set bonuses yet), nor was I using stealth of any kind, and I still found myself in the final room, confused and irritated because I'd cleared and couldn't complete the mission.  I had to go back, find the mutt and make a third trip through the corridors.

 

Half a dozen ways to complete the objective could've been implemented, and the development team decided to use a 12 year old design element that has not only never worked reliably, but which didn't even serve a purpose beyond being present.  No combat buffs, no combat aid, no interactivity, not even some extra ambushes, all that dog is there for is to be escorted to the end.  The Chekov's Gun of Co*.

 

Feh.  They should've used a Praetorian Fusionette, at least she would've been entertaining in her adorably scatterbrained, psychotic way.

 

[Coyotedancer]

Fusion is kind of a jerk, as I recall... But yeah. He might be more fun to have around than that near-sighted excuse for a coyote. <_<

[UltraAlt]

On 9/29/2020 at 1:30 PM, Greycat said:

You don't, though it doesn't hurt, admittedly. This mission is easily soloable. Depending, I suppose, on your settings - I'll only run this at base settings. Honestly I wouldn't do it with *more* than two people max. More than that = larger mobs = more chance to escape.

 

Honestly, I always look forward to this mission. It's one of my favourites.

I think people here aren't seen the word "might" in my post.

[UltraAlt]

On 9/29/2020 at 1:32 PM, Lines said:

I don't want to put words in Lumi's mouth, but I read it as "Escort missions are badly designed", rather than "The concept of saving citizens is a bad one".

 

It more calls into question the mechanical AI pathing issues that CoH is famous for. It's easy to imagine a better execution of those sorts of missions.

 

Edit: The one that really grinds me is from that same Johnny Sonata arc, where you need to kidnap Akarist from the Shadow Shard.

He struggles to path over the terrain, and then when you lose him he'll say "And here I am left to my own devices. There are few things as depressing as an incompetant kidnapping."

Mate, I'm not the one who's confused by a slight incline!

And I'm not saying that I think that it is conceptual only to go into a mission and beat up the bad guys and "Thanks for saving me".

I think escorting a NPC out of a mission against responding against enemy forces trying to stop you is very superhero.

 

The escort AI is way better at following than it first was. 

Better NPC AI to avoid terrain features? I can agree with a better game design on that.