A fascinating discovery involving alignments, street hunts, and mission doors.

[Heraclea]

I am running some old school content on my staff/ninjitsu/weapons scrapper, who has the full double-naught spy package and is vigilante in alignment.  

 

One step in Harvey Maylor's story arc requires her to defeat 20 carnies.  So I thought about giving St. Martial a try, because nice gray Carnies can be reliably found there.

 

To my mild surprise they counted.  I was worried about this, because I had already run into an issue with Dark Astoria Tsoos not counting as Tsoos for the costume slot mission.  

 

So I call the contact from St. M.  To my further astonishment, he sends me to the next door mission -- in Sharkhead.

 

Only not really, since when I get to Sharkhead the door mysteriouslly switches to Skyway.

 

Strange.  

Edited May 11, 2021 by Heraclea

[MTeague]

Huh. I wonder if that changed somewhere along the way. I'd have sworn that Harvey Maylor gave a lot of "kill 50 carnies in peregrine island" missions, where carnies in other zones did not count, and carnies inside missions did not count, they had to be out in the wild in Peregrine street sweeping.

 

It usually meant I'd have to kill about 45 Malta, 53 Rikti, and 32 Nemesis to evenutally get the 50 carnies i needed.

[laudwic]

When I street sweep for xp and to just relax in PI, I avoid carnie to leave them for whoever gets stuck with that annoying mission from Harvey.

[Heraclea]

Tbis was not the street hunt - I never take those, and if it's all he's giving I try a different contact - but a part of his story arc involving Vanessa DeVore.   No zone was specified, so I thought I'd try St. M because I know where they live there.   Last time I ran that the final mission bugged out on me, so I wanted to try it again. 

[TheZag]

Id say you dodged a bullet there.  In those types of hunts,  if you kill them inside another door mission,  its possible to not have a door to go to at all or the nav marker at a door that doesnt work.  I guess killing them on the other side of the fence just barely works.

[Xiddo]

On 5/11/2021 at 5:14 PM, Heraclea said:

So I call the contact from St. M.  To my further astonishment, he sends me to the next door mission -- in Sharkhead.

 

Only not really, since when I get to Sharkhead the door mysteriouslly switches to Skyway.

 

Strange.  

I had a very similar thing to this! Called a blueside contact when on red shores and he sent me to Port Oakes.
 

 

[Heraclea]

On 5/11/2021 at 1:43 PM, TheZag said:

Id say you dodged a bullet there.  In those types of hunts,  if you kill them inside another door mission,  its possible to not have a door to go to at all or the nav marker at a door that doesnt work.  I guess killing them on the other side of the fence just barely works.

I suspect that one difference is that after the street hunt I had to call  the contact.  Old school content like that is notorious for having autofire missions - especially timed missions - that lurk behind street hunts or other missions.  If I am remembering right, something like this bugged out the finale the last time I ran On the Psychic Plane, which this was a part of.  But in this instance I had to make the call to get the next part. 

[Replacement]

I've been slowly running Harvey's arc via ouro for... About 3 months! (I don't log onto the character often) 

 

As a vigilante, I had the same thought. I was able to do this at least 3 times.

 

Basically, it boils down to the age old difference between "hunt 30 carnies in PI" vs "hunt 30 carnies. You can find them in Pi".  The latter doesn't actually care.

[Heraclea]

The same odd little glitch repeated for me later in the arc, where I got yet another street hunt for Carnies.  I defeated those in St, M as well.  This time I got an autofire mission that sent me to Nerva, but when I arrived in Nerva it wanted me in Brickstown instead.  The mission door worked in Brickstown FWIW. 

 

The strangeness of old school content, where office building doors lead to blue caves, and vice versa, was very much in evidence during the arc.  It's as if old school content just picks a random door in a random zone.  So if you're redside the mission sends you to a random redside door that has a hidden blueside complement. 

 

The arc is specifically labelled as Hero in alignment in the mission blurbs. 

[Replacement]

23 minutes ago, Heraclea said:

The same odd little glitch repeated for me later in the arc, where I got yet another street hunt for Carnies.  I defeated those in St, M as well.  This time I got an autofire mission that sent me to Nerva, but when I arrived in Nerva it wanted me in Brickstown instead.  The mission door worked in Brickstown FWIW. 

 

The strangeness of old school content, where office building doors lead to blue caves, and vice versa, was very much in evidence during the arc.  It's as if old school content just picks a random door in a random zone.  So if you're redside the mission sends you to a random redside door that has a hidden blueside complement. 

 

The arc is specifically labelled as Hero in alignment in the mission blurbs. 

I believe this is exactly correct. There is a particular "style" of mission that simply searches for valid doors. You can see this in action if you run an arc in a party and everyone gets the same mission in different zones.

 

These missions are definitely older than i16, so they have no idea what alignment is. This is entirely conjecture from me, but it makes sense to me that a simple "list" check would run when you first pick up the mission -- "you're red side? Consult this list to find a red door."

And then when you click, it probably runs a (perhaps added post-GR?) Error check saying this isn't a valid door for YOU - and then reroutes you accordingly.

 

It's interesting that I didn't run into this issue, but that might be due to a) Ouroboros or b) perhaps I kept waiting until I was away from the Rogue Isles before calling it in.

 

Unimportant but for the sake of clarity: I ran several several Harvey Maylor missions before giving up and taking the arc through ouro instead.  It's possible some of those Hunts were pre-arc.

[Heraclea]

7 hours ago, Replacement said:

Basically, it boils down to the age old difference between "hunt 30 carnies in PI" vs "hunt 30 carnies. You can find them in Pi".  The latter doesn't actually car

 

I believe this is exactly right.  And the last time I ran story arcs in Croatoa, I finished a mission that needed Red Caps to be defeated in Misty Wood, where they're hard to find, by kiting spawns of Red Caps out of the Broken Teeth and into the Misty Wood.   Once they were across the border they counted.