Begin story arcs immediately with new contacts.

[Ukase]

This is a hold-over from the old devs. For whatever their reasons, there are some contacts - Tina Mac, Maria Jenkins, for example, who give you one mission to do before they'll let you start on the arc. 

I realize that half our player base PL's beyond all the lower level stuff and can just do the arcs directly through ouro. But I don't always do that. 
But I am getting really tired of these "busy" work missions that don't give merits. And I can only auto-complete one mission per three days. 

It would be quite a welcome change to approach a new contact and instead of seeing the "Security Chief" or doing some useless non-story arc mission, or non-badge mission, but get directly to the story arc. I have selected, accepted and abandoned over a dozen times in an attempt to get Jenny Firkens and Jose Escalante, and Allison King to give me their story arc - but none of them will, despite their being in my active contact list and not having any other arcs in progress. (nor any other missions in the queue. ) 

How hard could it be to have each contact offer the entire list of missions the way the Mayhem/Safeguard contacts do? 

[srmalloy]

Take one of the missions they offer, then abandon it, and talk to them again. Repeat until you get the badge mission/story arc you're looking for.

[Ukase]

On 8/17/2021 at 10:45 AM, srmalloy said:

Take one of the missions they offer, then abandon it, and talk to them again. Repeat until you get the badge mission/story arc you're looking for.

You can try this with Maria Jenkins, Tina MacIntyre - you name it - they will not start the story arc. They insist on side missions before the story arc. 

Without exception, Maria Jenkins is gonna have you clobber Infernal before the story arc, and Tina Mac will have you dispatch the Psychic Clockwork King before her arc. Every time, no matter what you do. 

[krj12]

Shrug, I don't see how this is different than having a story arc where you don't like the first mission.  Just do it.

 

 

[Vanden]

1 hour ago, Ukase said:

You can try this with Maria Jenkins, Tina MacIntyre - you name it - they will not start the story arc. They insist on side missions before the story arc. 

Without exception, Maria Jenkins is gonna have you clobber Infernal before the story arc, and Tina Mac will have you dispatch the Psychic Clockwork King before her arc. Every time, no matter what you do. 

 

True, but both of those missions are good for badges, which kind of undermines your claim that they’re useless side missions.

[Aurora_Girl]

In the time this post took, you could just...do the mission. 

[Replacement]

I view those starter missions as just part of the arc, at least like Jenkins' which is always the same.

 

I would rather every single mission without a blue title gave one merit.

 

1 hour ago, Aurora_Girl said:

In the time this post took, you could just...do the mission. 

Instructions unclear. Ran mission for 20 years.

[ZorkNemesis]

1 hour ago, Replacement said:

Instructions unclear. Ran mission for 20 years.

 

Ah, the demon farms of yesteryear.

[Ukase]

16 hours ago, Aurora_Girl said:

In the time this post took, you could just...do the mission. 

Of course I could. But other than the xp - which is mostly useless to me, as I'm after reward merits, there's no motivation to do it, other than to get it out of the way. 

It is true that the psychic clockwork king awards the Emancipator badge - but other than my badge characters, it's a useless badge. Doesn't count towards any stat boosting accolades, so there's not much reason to pursue it. 

And it doesn't make much sense to tackle Infernal before the arc from Maria Jenkins, because we just face him again towards the end of the arc. 

 

[TheZag]

I think they are part of the arc.  They just didnt change the color of the title or add the name of the arc to it.  They also left them out on the ouro version of the arc.