Freeform missions

[MsSmart]

Hi:

 

   If you read comic books, very often the hero will stumble on a situation while on patrol or on their way to a mission.

 

   It occurs to me, it would be exciting that players could simply try opening a door of a building, or the front of a enclosed cave, or an entrance in a ship and get a totally random mission upon entering. Think of this as a modified trick-or-treat door thing, but instead of spawning a mob it spawns a mission.

 

   I would find this exciting because in the present contact system, you know what you are up against, while in this one it luck of the draw. Missions can be made to make sense to the type of entrance, a cave would have 5th Column, Oranbenga CoT, Rikti, Knives of Artemis, Snakes, etc. A building door would have Crey, Carnival, Malta, Arachnos, etc. And according to the zone, these would also have the "local" groups as well among the mission choices but only if the team leader is of the appropriate level of the zone.

 

What do you all think?

 

Sue

[summers]

Conceptually this is very similar to 'tip' missions. The idea of clicking random doors with a small chance of a mission doesn't seem especially appealing to me sorry

[Evercent]

This just sounds like a slightly altered version of radio missions

[CrudeVileTerror]

Clicking on random doors seems a little breaking-and-entering'y . . . 

 

So perfect for Villains instead of Heroes!

[nightroarer]

One option might be random spawns on the street that give you missions (similar to the side missions in the safeguard missions).

[srmalloy]

4 hours ago, MsSmart said:

It occurs to me, it would be exciting that players could simply try opening a door of a building, or the front of a enclosed cave, or an entrance in a ship and get a totally random mission upon entering. Think of this as a modified trick-or-treat door thing, but instead of spawning a mob it spawns a mission.

In a loosely-connected theme, it would be nice if you could have missions where the mission objectives change when you enter the mission. In particular, the mission from Steven Sheridan where he gives you the opportunity to appear at an SF convention. When he talks to you, it's all about appearing at the con, but as soon as you accept the mission, the mission objective appears as 'defeat all villains in building' (at least the location is no longer in Crey's Folly, which makes no sense). I mean, you know it's not going to be as simple as showing up at a con, but it would be nice to keep the fiction alive until you actually step into the mission and the real objective becomes apparent. Having missions where you get the mission as 'Do X', and it changes to 'Do Y' when you enter, because the original mission was a facade to get you there -- something that would be tailor-made for Nemesis, for example.

[srmalloy]

23 minutes ago, nightroarer said:

One option might be random spawns on the street that give you missions (similar to the side missions in the safeguard missions).

Rather than just random spawns on the street, have civilians you rescue from being threatened by villains tell you about how they escaped from where more of that group are holding hostages in a nearby building or some such. Give people a reason to take care of the random muggers.

[nightroarer]

1 hour ago, srmalloy said:

Rather than just random spawns on the street, have civilians you rescue from being threatened by villains tell you about how they escaped from where more of that group are holding hostages in a nearby building or some such. Give people a reason to take care of the random muggers.

Agreed. Either or both would be great. Different story options.

 

Of course, back on the "live" servers I stopped muggings quite a bit when my daughter was little. She would watch me play and say "but, Daddy, you have the save the citizen!" How could I not? Then I got her an account and she helped me save the citizens.

 

She just turned 21--and is still saving Paragon City with me and my wife. 🙂

Edited December 20, 2020 by nightroarer

[MsSmart]

The general idea is being able to get missions, without the need of contacts, traveling to places etc. Yes radios can somewhat do it, but a the end you know what is at the other end of the door.

 

Sue

[Grindingsucks]

I'll tell you why it sounds like a great idea to me:  Because I could choose to click only on doors and always avoid those awful cave maps.

[srmalloy]

3 hours ago, Grindingsucks said:

I'll tell you why it sounds like a great idea to me:  Because I could choose to click only on doors and always avoid those awful cave maps.

I see you haven't experienced the "Wait, what?" moment of clicking on a mine door on Nerva and finding yourself in a bank.

[Grindingsucks]

Ha, ha!  True, I forgot about that. 😁

[MsSmart]

On 12/20/2020 at 10:09 AM, srmalloy said:

Rather than just random spawns on the street, have civilians you rescue from being threatened by villains tell you about how they escaped from where more of that group are holding hostages in a nearby building or some such. Give people a reason to take care of the random muggers.

I really like this, sometime in the past I suggested a badge for rescuing civilians...

 

Sue

[srmalloy]

39 minutes ago, MsSmart said:

I really like this, sometime in the past I suggested a badge for rescuing civilians...

There would need to be a number of different 'opportunity' missions based on the type of rescue -- rescue other hostages for a 'threatening civilians' spawn, a gang safehouse for an attempted purse snatching, etc., but it should be easy enough to set up a generator for.

 

One of the other things that I thought about was modifying the rewards a touch so that, when you rescued civilians on the street (assuming that you weren't running 2XP and had inf turned off), you'd get a minimum of 1 inf for rescuing them, no matter how overleveled you were to the mobs. 1 inf for a rescue isn't something you're going to get rich from, but having a tangible reward, no matter how tiny, keeps the feeling of being a hero.