I Have To Do WHAT? Fix Mission Text!

[Aurora_Girl]

We've all been there: cruising along through a story arc, looking for those sweet, sweet merits, and a "Defeat Council General Nancy and guards" comes along.

Tank-stealth to the end, punch Archon Nancy in the face, smack his buddies around, aaaaaaaaaaand....nada.

Start clearing spawns from the boss mob outward, just in case the "and guards" bubble extends a little more aaaaaaaaaand...nada.

Reread the mission text: Ope, no mention of a "make sure you arrest everyone in the area," or "leave no witnesses"? Surely it's not a stealth kill-all, right?

IT IS! And there's no way to know unless you do it, and your dumb ass is set to +4x8 because you're narcissistic.

OR BETTER YET

You have to rescue five separate hostages on a six-floor office map, and NOWHERE IN ANY OF THE MISSION TEXT OR DESCRIPTIONS IS THERE A SINGLE MENTION OF HOSTAGES!

Let's start a list of missions we *know* are borked like this, and I don't know if the solution is to just add in some text, or change the mission success parameters, or what...but not everybody reads or trusts the wiki, not every mission is even included in it, so let's pool our frustration and knock out a pretty major QoL issue, yeah?

I'll begin:

Hero Contact: Crimson
Story Arc: World Wide Red
Mission: Catch the shape-shifter 'Moment'
Stated Objective in Navigator: Defeat Moment and guards
Actual completion objective: Defeat all mobs on map (Maybe? I didn't finish until I had cleared all but the last hostage mob, so can't confirm); rescue 5 non-escort hostages
Suggested fix: Change mission text and Navigator objective to reflect either kill-all or 5 hostages to rescue, *or* change mission complete objective to reflect existing "defeat boss and guards" text

[Vanden]

The vast majority of the time “Defeat X and Guards” means defeat the named mob and every mob in the room it spawned in. If you’ve found a specific mission that says that but is in fact a kill all, submit a bug report and be specific about which mission it is/what contact gives it. Manually going through every mission in the game and double-checking that the victory conditions match the text is not a particularly realistic goal.

[Rudra]

Except, that is not a bug. It is sloppy mission text. It could be filed under typos, but works just as well as a suggestion.

[MTeague]

I'm torn.

• On one hand, truth of advertising, let people know what they're getting involved with up-front, etc. 
• On the other hand, it's somewhat realistic to have the mission change out from under you in response to other events. Maybe you had no idea there would be hostages but once you got there, Okay, we gotta do something about them, get them out of danger, etc. 
• On the other other hand, I sometimes sigh deeply when I'm in a goldside 1-20 mission spending time on the first couple spawns of enemies only to look up and, Oh, surprise, there's a mission timer, saying I need to find some computer and disable something in the next 2 minutes and 30 seconds or I'm going to be swarmed relentlessly. 
• On the other other other hand, I actually do vastly prefer goldside content to most other game content... and yes, I've long since run out of hands.

[Rudra]

*offers @MTeague additional hands* Dug 'em fresh this morning. Should be good for a while.

[Aurora_Girl]

44 minutes ago, Vanden said:

The vast majority of the time “Defeat X and Guards” means defeat the named mob and every mob in the room it spawned in. If you’ve found a specific mission that says that but is in fact a kill all, submit a bug report and be specific about which mission it is/what contact gives it. Manually going through every mission in the game and double-checking that the victory conditions match the text is not a particularly realistic goal.

 

I can file a bug report in that it appears your reading comprehension is bugged. 😉

I'm asking for a group-sourced (because we all know at least one mission like this which is not bugged, just badly composed) list to save devs the work of "Manually going through every mission in the game and double-checking that the victory conditions match the text" and just giving them a list of what's wrong and what can be done to fix it.

[Rudra]

1 hour ago, MTeague said:

On the other hand, it's somewhat realistic to have the mission change out from under you in response to other events. Maybe you had no idea there would be hostages but once you got there, Okay, we gotta do something about them, get them out of danger, etc. 

Late response, sorry. Anyway, I'm fine if the mission parameters change when you enter the mission. Like you said, things may be different when you get on site as opposed to what you were briefed. However, the mission text inside the mission should then reflect the new mission parameters.

 

Example:

Mission: Defeat Evil Lord Kumquat. Do you accept?

*click yes*

Navigation text: Defeat Evil Lord Kumquat and guards.

*enter mission*

Mission text: Defeat Evil Lord Kumquat, defeat all Rutabaga, rescue 6 Sir Loin hostages.

 

Current:

Mission: Defeat Evil Lord Kumquat. Do you accept?

*click yes*

Navigation text: Defeat Evil Lord Kumquat and guards.

*enter mission*

Mission text: Defeat Evil Lord Kumquat and guards.

Mission actual: Defeat Evil Lord Kumquat, defeat all Rutabaga, rescue 6 Sir Loin hostages.

 

One shows the mission changed and the player has to adapt. The other, the mission still changed, but now the player has to figure out how and resolve it.

[Vanden]

49 minutes ago, Aurora_Girl said:

I'm asking for a group-sourced (because we all know at least one mission like this which is not bugged, just badly composed) list to save devs the work of "Manually going through every mission in the game and double-checking that the victory conditions match the text" and just giving them a list of what's wrong and what can be done to fix it.

 

 

You mean like a bunch of bug reports?

[Rudra]

Just now, Vanden said:

 

You mean like a bunch of bug reports?

It does not matter how often you say "bug report", it does not change that what @Aurora_Girl is talking about is not a bug. Incorrect text is not a bug. Never has been. You want to refer her to the typos section? Sure. That makes sense. It is not necessary since she is posting a suggestion to get other players to report their own encounters with bad mission text so there is a consolidated location for it, but it is most definitely not a bug.

[Vanden]

1 minute ago, Rudra said:

It does not matter how often you say "bug report", it does not change that what @Aurora_Girl is talking about is not a bug. Incorrect text is not a bug. Never has been. You want to refer her to the typos section? Sure. That makes sense. It is not necessary since she is posting a suggestion to get other players to report their own encounters with bad mission text so there is a consolidated location for it, but it is most definitely not a bug.

 

Oh I think a mission that tells you to do X and then doesn’t complete when you do X is very much a bug.

[Rudra]

If the mission is written to require the player defeat all enemies and rescue hostages, and it completes when you do so but the mission description/text said you only needed to defeat the boss and guards, that is not a bug. The mission worked as was intended. The data provided to the player is incorrect.

 

Edit: Now if the mission required you to defeat the boss and all guards, but did not complete when you did so and you had to sit there and wait on an empty map, then yeah, that would be a bug. The mission did not work as intended. (Assuming of course, the problem is not that the mission spawned a required target somewhere off the map. That is a map geometry error. That requires the map being reworked rather than a fault in the code.)

Edited March 18, 2022 by Rudra

[Bill Z Bubba]

3 hours ago, Aurora_Girl said:

and your dumb ass is set to +4x8 because you're narcissistic.

 

I resemble that remark.

[Riverdusk]

There's also the opposite, one mission I always end up doing where it says to defeat all, but in reality you only need to hit all the glowies.   There's even an "editor's  note" on the wiki about it.  Stop the Sky Raiders before they can make off with Balsim's designs  Ends up being an easy mission with a pretty good reward (Cryonite Armor temp power).

 

https://hcwiki.cityofheroes.dev/wiki/Oswald_Cuthbert#Stop_the_Sky_Raiders_before_they_can_make_off_with_Balsim.27s_designs

[Doomguide2005]

3 hours ago, Vanden said:

 

Oh I think a mission that tells you to do X and then doesn’t complete when you do X is very much a bug.

     I think it can be said it doesn't really matter if it's called a bug or not.  It's a common (bug, typo, annoyance, choose the term you like) "phenomenon" with a similar potential fixes that the player base as a whole would generally see as a positive quality of life change.  And as a suggestion using the player base to collect the occurrence of this annoyance in one public data base for all to see would be considered useful by some chunk of the player base including this one.

[JasperStone]

I have a strong dislike for the missions where you have to rescue a hostage, find X, or defeat X.

You do so.

Now Defeat ALL pops up.

When nowhere in the text does it say you have to do so.

[srmalloy]

On 3/19/2022 at 8:20 AM, JasperStone said:

Now Defeat ALL pops up.

When nowhere in the text does it say you have to do so.

At least you get a 'defeat all' message. I'm not sure it's 100% true, but it seems like every single mission to "Check out Nemesis base" (or facility, or whatever) gives you a simple, concrete mission goal (i.e.,'look for clues')... and never once says that it's really a 'defeat all' mission, revealing itself only when it doesn't complete when you finish the displayed mission goal.

[Rudra]

Yeah, this is the real problem. Mission says to defeat a specific opponent or get a glowy, and after you defeat said opponent or get the glowy, defeating all enemies in the room, the mission is not done. And nothing tells you that you are missing anything. So you start defeating mobs. And when the last mob on the map is down, mission finally completes. I would really like it if the mission did have a Defeat All pop up. At least then you wouldn't be wandering the map looking for a hidden glowy you can't hear because it doesn't exist and the mission was a stealth defeat all.

[Take One]

Another option is to add a note to the wiki about the mission, so that people can check the wiki if they run into a mission like this and find out that the text is lying and you really have to do this objective.

[Rudra]

15 minutes ago, Take One said:

Another option is to add a note to the wiki about the mission, so that people can check the wiki if they run into a mission like this and find out that the text is lying and you really have to do this objective.

How about the mission just be accurate? No need to check wikis after you've done the mission objective and you're standing there wondering why the mission isn't done. Especially if you're playing on a system that for some reason doesn't let you alt-tab out of the game to the desktop so you can open your browser and then do a search to find the wiki, then search for the mission, to find out what the mission objective should have already told you. Like me. Unless I already have my browser or something else in the background open, I can't just minimize or alt-tab out of the game. I have to close the game, then open my browser and check. It is faster to just meander through killing everything hoping that was the mission objective all along rather than have to restart the mission after finding out that was the mission objective all along.

 

(Edit: Most aggravating part of that? CoX is the only game I play that doesn't let me minimize it to open anything else.)

Edited March 21, 2022 by Rudra

[Take One]

5 hours ago, Rudra said:

How about the mission just be accurate? No need to check wikis after you've done the mission objective and you're standing there wondering why the mission isn't done.

 

One thing is easy to do and anyone can create an account on the wiki and do it in a few minutes.

The other thing is to report the error as a bug and wait for the volunteer devs to take time out of their volunteer unpaid schedule to fix what is basically a non-issue, since the mission can be completed and isn't really broken, it just takes a little longer to finish than expected.

 

I can't really add caveats for all possible gaming setups so if you can't backdrop or whatever, I guess none of these solutions are for you.

Edited March 21, 2022 by Take One

[SwitchFade]

This thread defeated my brain. And I didn't even read all.

 

Bug.

[MTeague]

@Take One nailed it.  There's an INSANE number of total missions. Which is awesome, we have a ridonkulous amount of content to enjoy and keep us busy.  But given limited staff, given that it's a hobby for them, given that they have real lives too, and their own day jobs, I don't see them picking up every single mission from every single contact and play-testing each and every one of them, paying strict attention to the mission text vs mission objectives to check for exact matches. Maybe they'll surprise me? But I would not consider it a realistic expectation.

 

If annoations on a wiki are enough for you, create an account on the wiki and edit as needed.

If you want the actual in-game text to change, then submit a bug report clearly outlining

• Faction (Blue/Red/Gold)
• Contact
• Mission Title
• Stated mission requirements
• Actual completion requirements

Be as precise as possible, to help them make targetted changes to specific missions in need.

And be patient. It might be priority number 613 on their priority queue. Or quite a bit lower than that. 

True, sometimes programmers like to pick up a few low-hanging fruit bugs that they can bang out quickly, but it's also possible it might stay as-is for six months or a year.

[Rudra]

Which is why @Aurora_Girl made this a thread for the players to report the missions that need their mission objective text fixed rather than saying "Hey, devs, go through the game and fix all this."

On 3/18/2022 at 2:01 PM, Aurora_Girl said:

Let's start a list of missions we *know* are borked like this,

 

On 3/18/2022 at 2:55 PM, Aurora_Girl said:

I'm asking for a group-sourced (because we all know at least one mission like this which is not bugged, just badly composed) list to save devs the work of "Manually going through every mission in the game and double-checking that the victory conditions match the text" and just giving them a list of what's wrong and what can be done to fix it.

 

I really don't see how this part keeps getting missed.

[MTeague]

4 hours ago, Rudra said:

I really don't see how this part keeps getting missed.

 

Um.... because reading is hard, and I sometimes don't do it?

 

 

Apologies to both @Rudra and @Aurora_Girl.

[Take One]

14 hours ago, Rudra said:

Which is why [Auroragirl but no need to tag them again] made this a thread for the players to report the missions that need their mission objective text fixed rather than saying "Hey, devs, go through the game and fix all this."

 

Bug reports already creates a list of bugs that needs to be fixed in a place where the devs are more likely to see it.