Focused Feedback: Tour Guide Missions (Release Candidates)

[Arcanum]

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Patch Notes for April 10th, 2021 - Issue 27: Second Chances, Page 2 (Release Candidate 1)

 

Tour Guide Missions

Issue 27, Page 2 introduces a brand new type of mission: Tour Guide Missions. These are special tip missions which drop when street sweeping in most zones, and will direct you to any exploration badges that you haven't yet earned in that zone. This is especially helpful for unlocking Long Range Teleporter destinations without needing to rely on VidiotMaps.

 

Detailed Info

• Enemies in most zones now have a small chance to drop a Tour Guide Mission Tip
  • The tips will only drop when street sweeping, by defeating enemies out on the streets (critters spawned through other means will not count)
  • The tips will drop regardless of your level - grey conned mobs will still drop tips - however, the tip drop rate increases based on the rank of the enemy you're fighting (ie: bosses are more likely to drop tips)
  • Tour Guide Missions are classed as Tips, and will show up in the Tips tab of the Contacts window
  • You can only hold one tip per zone at a time, but can carry a total of three
• Investigating this tip will direct you to one of the exploration badges in that zone
  • Once accepted, these missions cannot be abandoned, autocompleted, or team completed - you must visit the badge location, which will auto-complete the mission
  • If you earn the exploration badge for a specific tip before investigating it, it will point you towards a different exploration badge in that zone
  • If you earn the exploration accolade before investigating the tip, you will only be able to dismiss it
• They do not grant any additional rewards beyond the badge
• All zones which can be unlocked in the Long Range Teleporter have Tour Guide Missions set up (apart from Pocket D and Kallisti Wharf), which is a total of 288 missions!

Step 1: Go. Hunt. Kill Skuls.

 

Step 2: Acquire Tips.

 

Step 3: Collect Badges.

Edited April 10, 2021 by GM Arcanum

[Arcanum]

 Build 1 - March 13th

Spoiler

Tour Guide Missions

Issue 27, Page 2 introduces a brand new type of mission: Tour Guide Missions. These are special tip missions which drop when street sweeping in most zones, and will direct you to any exploration badges that you haven't yet earned in that zone. This is especially helpful for unlocking destinations for the Long Range Teleporter without needing to rely on VidiotMaps.

 

Detailed Info

• Enemies in most zones now have a small chance to drop a Tour Guide Mission Tip
  • The tips will only drop when street sweeping, by defeating enemies out on the streets (critters spawned through other means will not count)
    The tips will drop regardless of your level - grey conned mobs will still drop tips
  • Tour Guide Missions are classed as Tips, and will show up in the Tips tab of the Contacts window
  • You can only hold one tip per zone, and they will be hidden when you are not currently in that zone to avoid cluttering up the list
• Investigating this tip will direct you to one of the exploration badges in that zone
  • Once accepted, these missions cannot be abandoned, autocompleted, or team completed - you must visit the badge location, which will auto-complete the mission
  • If you earn the exploration badge for a specific tip before investigating it, it will point you towards a different exploration badge in that zone
  • If you earn the exploration accolade before investigating the tip, you will only be able to dismiss it
• They do not grant any additional rewards beyond the badge
• All zones which can be unlocked in the Long Range Teleporter have Tour Guide Missions set up (apart from Pocket D and Kallisti Wharf), which is a total of 288 missions!

 

Step 1: Go. Hunt. Kill Skuls.

 

Step 2: Acquire Tips.

 

Step 3: Collect Badges.

 

Edited March 13, 2021 by GM Arcanum

[starro]

288 missions!!!  

[Faultline]

Big shout out to @Nayreia who wrote the text for all those missions.

[MacBeighn]

Was there no way to stop the tips from dropping at all, after map accolade badge was earned?

[Faultline]

10 minutes ago, MacBeighn said:

Was there no way to stop the tips from dropping at all, after map accolade badge was earned?

They do stop dropping once you have the accolade for the map. However, if you received a mission, then went and got the accolade on your own (without using the mission) you have to dismiss the lingering tip yourself - it won't automatically be revoked.

[MsSmart]

could you also please add Historical markers, please, please

 

Sue

[Doc_Scorpion]

45 minutes ago, MsSmart said:

could you also please add Historical markers, please, please

 

Sue

That would mess up the intended purpose of these tips...  Which is to help people earn the Long Range Teleport and the necessary beacons.

That being said, the new /Thumbtack command accepts the location information in the HC wiki, so it's just a simple cut-'n-paste job and edit out the comma's.  That'll make it faster/easier to find them.

[Faultline]

50 minutes ago, Doc_Scorpion said:

That being said, the new /Thumbtack command accepts the location information in the HC wiki, so it's just a simple cut-'n-paste job and edit out the comma's.

 

You don't need to edit out the commas - the parser will try its best to clean up the input into something useable. As long as it can recognize exactly three floats between [-100000 -2000 -100000] and [100000 2000 100000], it will make them into a thumbtack link.

[Doc_Scorpion]

6 minutes ago, Faultline said:

You don't need to edit out the commas - the parser will try its best to clean up the input into something useable. As long as it can recognize exactly three floats between [-100000 -2000 -100000] and [100000 2000 100000], it will make them into a thumbtack link.

SWEET!!!

[Troo]

1 hour ago, Doc_Scorpion said:

new /Thumbtack command

 

link or explanation might help folks. >LINK<

 

regarding the new tip missions. excellent stuff!

 

Edited March 13, 2021 by Troo
added link

[starro]

3 hours ago, Faultline said:

Big shout out to @Nayreia who wrote the text for all those missions.

 

Thank you for the new content!  Are these formulaic or tied into COH / personal  lore?   I look forward to finding out!  

I always liked COH for the big stories, side stories, personal stories the game and AE allowed. 

[Telephone]

While the structure of the missions is (necessarily) formulaic, each mission has its own text tied in to CoH lore and history. Thousands of lines of text were written and proofread by our volunteers (chief among them the previously-mentioned @Nayreia, who as mentioned wrote the text).

[Cobalt Arachne]

16 minutes ago, duane said:

 

Thank you for the new content!  Are these formulaic or tied into COH / personal  lore?   I look forward to finding out!  

I always liked COH for the big stories, side stories, personal stories the game and AE allowed. 

Most welcome!

As Telephone said, the system's mission structure was formula but the writing was created from scratch while referencing the original badge's text, taking their physical location in the zone into account, and written with knowledge of the game's lore and its community's culture/history.

[CraterLabs]

While part of me prefers to just sort of stumble upon exploration badges over time or, occasionally, look at odd geography to see if it has an associated badge, I think I really like this. Since pretty much all the badges have interesting lore associated with them, I look forward to seeing them!

 

Except... since I have so many exploration badges already, will my well-traveled characters miss out? Guess I'll have to roll a few inquisitive alts.

[arthurh35353]

I wonder how well the Tip Missions can lead you to the really hidden badges (like ones on tree limbs, in the air on broken tram lines and that hidden Easter egg in Faultline?)

[Cobalt Arachne]

54 minutes ago, arthurh35353 said:

I wonder how well the Tip Missions can lead you to the really hidden badges (like ones on tree limbs, in the air on broken tram lines and that hidden Easter egg in Faultline?)

The badges are put on your navigation and a coordinate marker placed (like a mission door) so you should have no problem locating any badge's marker.

 

...Except oddities like Egg Hunter in Faultline; That is a good thought actually, as the coordinate marker may not be sufficient alone. I'll update the nav text to be more explicit for that one specifically, as it quite hidden unlike the rest.

[Sovera]

Nayreia best reia.

[SuperPlyx]

So the missions only drop for the zone your in?  i.e. if I'm in Faultline sweeping I only get Faultline tour guide missions? 

 

I really wanna know what the text is for the big donut badge.

[Doc_Scorpion]

1 hour ago, arthurh35353 said:

I wonder how well the Tip Missions can lead you to the really hidden badges (like ones on tree limbs, in the air on broken tram lines and that hidden Easter egg in Faultline?)

Presumably the same way using the /thumbtack command works when you feed it coordinates from HC wiki - you have a vertical coordinate as well as the two horizontal coordinates.  (And yes, /thumbtack will accurately locate badges that are off the ground, I tested it.)

@Nayreia, does the system have vertical coordinates?

[Cobalt Arachne]

4 minutes ago, SuperPlyx said:

So the missions only drop for the zone your in?  i.e. if I'm in Faultline sweeping I only get Faultline tour guide missions?

Correct; The tips you get are always from the zone you are in.

 

If you have the zone's exploration accolade (all eight badges) the tips will no longer drop in that zone.

[Cobalt Arachne]

Just now, Doc_Scorpion said:

does the system have vertical coordinates?

It does! They will put the nav marker exactly where the badge is located.

[Crasical]

This is neat and cool.

[EmperorSteele]

Feedback

General: The drop rate is in a good place. I got all 8 Atlas park badges in about an hour. Using VM would have been faster, sure, but I also don't think there's any risk of someone Street sweeping for an annoyingly long period of time just to get that last tip.

Part of me wishes the tip would be for the badge that's closest to you (I laughed when I literally had to AVOID triggering 2 badges on my way to the one I was going to, because I wanted to be able to read all the tips for testing); however, I realize that either the tech for that might not exist in the game, and/or, there's nothing guaranteeing that the player will be in the same spot when they read the tip as where they got it, so, random is good.

Atlas Park:
* The intro text has what I -believe- to be a grammatical error:
    "loaded up with all the latest information and cultural going-on." I feel like that should say goings on.

* I love that the Edge of Chaos pamphlet reads your actual level; it's funny when you're only level 1 or 2 and you essentially want to peek at a door reserved for level 45+ heroes XD

* The rest of the tips were good, too; I usually get most if not all these badges, and forgot some things about them, mostly because I've stopped reading them. But reading the tips first got me wanting to read the badges again, such as for Undefeated, where "reading a name I did not expect to see" got my curiosity piqued, so I actually read that badge when I got it, and felt rewarded for doing so. This is exactly how these sorts of things should be written, IMO!

I'll post further feedback once I get around to doing other zones. But for now, I like what I see!


 

[huang3721]

Thanks for the writing, @Nayreiaand the writing team! I love the new contents!

 

In First Ward, the tips usually drop after I have defeated a dozen or so bad guys. Although sometimes I have to defeat a hundred before it drops, it only happens twice (from eight tips). Overall, its pretty quick.

 

13 hours ago, GM Arcanum said:

Enemies in most zones now have a small chance to drop a Tour Guide Mission Tip

 

May I know the exact number? Is it 1-3%? 

Also, is it possible to have more than one tips? Do I have to finish it before I get another tip mission?