Ouroboros contacts stick & keep progress.

[Heavensrun]

So, at present, when you do an arc in Ouroboros, it enters task force mode, your progress bar with that contact is emptied, and at the end of the arc, your contact bar resets to what it was before you did the arc.  I understand why you have to go into TF mode, so no complaints about that.

But....You're supposed to be changing the past, right?  If you do the arc, other storylines respond as if you have done that arc.  So shouldn't the contact that sent you on it, like, remember you?

I'd like to propose that doing a story arc in Ouroboros should do two things:  If you don't have the contact in your contact list, they are added to it, and if you do an arc in Ouroboros, the progress you make on the Ouro TF contact bar should be added to the actual contact bar.

I'm going to confess, I have a personal motive in asking for this last thing. It really bugs me having empty or incomplete contact bars.  I know.  It's totally irrational, literally nobody sees it but me, but when I go to the contact list, and see those empty bars, something about it just....eats at my soul.  But doing all those arcs in the progress of levelling up is also pretty tedious, and disabling XP gains to stay in a level range long enough to fill all the bars....Well, I'm sure you all know, some levels ranges are....worse than others.  It'd be really nice if I could just come back and refill those bars later, when my build is more fleshed out.  It would also feel better moving on if I knew that if I changed my mind I could always go back later to fill up those bars.  (I'm pretty sure at one point it worked like this, but either that change is broken or got rolled back at some point, because I've been running a bunch of Ouro arcs lately and contact bars remain at "acquaintance." )

So the way I see it, this has the following benefits:
1)  It's more immersive.  The time travel conceit would feel more genuine if contacts are like "Hey, thanks for all your help!" rather than "Who are you again?"

2)  It allows weirdos like me to placate our OCD.

3)  You can fill up all the zones with contact stores!  Convenience!

4)  It gives people another thing to do, if they're looking for something to pass the time.

Hell, in a pinch you could even add badges for filling up all the contact bars in a zone or something.  I'm not sure if suggesting that is gonna make badgers love or hate me, though.

[srmalloy]

53 minutes ago, Heavensrun said:

The time travel conceit would feel more genuine if contacts are like "Hey, thanks for all your help!" rather than "Who are you again?"

That depends on which mechanism behind time travel is the one that's actually working. If I'm remembering the arc correctly, in the Pilgrim's arc, your final mission is from Twilight's Son, who sends you back to engineer a change in history, to no net effect, and he mentions in your debrief that this type of mission has not generally produced the desired outcomes. This increases the likelihood that, when you undertake an arc through the Pillar of Ice and Flame, you are actually going back to a close but parallel time stream, not your actual past, so the increase in familiarity with the arc's contact exists only in that time stream -- and after completing the arc, if you use the Pillar to do the same arc again, you get sent back to yet another time stream where you hadn't done it. So no matter how many times you do an arc through the Pillar, it doesn't affect your relationship with that arc's contact in your native time stream.

[Rudra]

Given what Twilight's Son says, when contacts/arcs are added to Ouroboros for the character to access, and how time travel works in some other sources? I'm going to say that a few things are going on here.

 

First, since the arcs are only added after you complete them already or you out-level them, they don't stack with your current status with the contact because you are re-writing the past rather than adding to the contact's experience with you. Each time you use the Pillar to do an arc, you are effectively going back to before you established any standing with that contact to re-accomplish something you already did. This does not apply in the case of a content you have not done previously. However, unless you had no standing with that contact before, you are most likely simply replacing what you did with that contact earlier with what you are flashing back to. Now if you had done no missions/arcs with that contact prior? Then yes, progress from that arc should be retained on that character.

 

Second, since you are rewriting your interactions with the time travel, you cannot add to your previous status because you are still only doing that one arc for the contact. So any previous experience you had with that contact outside of Ouroboros would be potentially shifted, not added to. The exception still being if you had no status with that contact prior, then you would be adding status for that arc as stated above. However, since the changes may or may not actually accomplish anything, the time stream may itself undergo a partial reversion. Since you are effectively separate from the time stream in Ouroboros, you have effectively created a temporal paradox that must be resolved, the time stream corrects itself back to a state prior to the paradox, you retain the memories of what was done, but for everyone else it goes away.

 

Just my theoretical take on the subject anyway. Mechanically? TFs/SFs simply don't retain contact progress after the arc is finished.

[Heavensrun]

17 hours ago, srmalloy said:

That depends on which mechanism behind time travel is the one that's actually working. If I'm remembering the arc correctly, in the Pilgrim's arc, your final mission is from Twilight's Son, who sends you back to engineer a change in history, to no net effect, and he mentions in your debrief that this type of mission has not generally produced the desired outcomes. This increases the likelihood that, when you undertake an arc through the Pillar of Ice and Flame, you are actually going back to a close but parallel time stream, not your actual past, so the increase in familiarity with the arc's contact exists only in that time stream -- and after completing the arc, if you use the Pillar to do the same arc again, you get sent back to yet another time stream where you hadn't done it. So no matter how many times you do an arc through the Pillar, it doesn't affect your relationship with that arc's contact in your native time stream.

 

Actually at the end of his arc Twilight's son says he has to go to the future to determine if the changes you made had the desired effect.

Which means it does HAVE an effect, it just might not be the one he's hoping for.  That is, in fact, the entire point of the Menders in the first place.  They're trying to manipulate the past to ensure that the coming storm doesn't come to pass.

[Heavensrun]

16 hours ago, Rudra said:

Given what Twilight's Son says, when contacts/arcs are added to Ouroboros for the character to access, and how time travel works in some other sources? I'm going to say that a few things are going on here.

 

First, since the arcs are only added after you complete them already or you out-level them, they don't stack with your current status with the contact because you are re-writing the past rather than adding to the contact's experience with you. Each time you use the Pillar to do an arc, you are effectively going back to before you established any standing with that contact to re-accomplish something you already did. This does not apply in the case of a content you have not done previously. However, unless you had no standing with that contact before, you are most likely simply replacing what you did with that contact earlier with what you are flashing back to. Now if you had done no missions/arcs with that contact prior? Then yes, progress from that arc should be retained on that character.

 

Second, since you are rewriting your interactions with the time travel, you cannot add to your previous status because you are still only doing that one arc for the contact. So any previous experience you had with that contact outside of Ouroboros would be potentially shifted, not added to. The exception still being if you had no status with that contact prior, then you would be adding status for that arc as stated above. However, since the changes may or may not actually accomplish anything, the time stream may itself undergo a partial reversion. Since you are effectively separate from the time stream in Ouroboros, you have effectively created a temporal paradox that must be resolved, the time stream corrects itself back to a state prior to the paradox, you retain the memories of what was done, but for everyone else it goes away.

 

Just my theoretical take on the subject anyway. Mechanically? TFs/SFs simply don't retain contact progress after the arc is finished.

 

There are three elements to this:  The system in terms of design, the system in terms of lore, and the practical implementation of the mechanics.

 

In terms of game design:

 

Look, Ideally, every contact would have enough missions to fill their contact bar and every mission would count towards the contact bar exactly once.

 

But that isn't how it is and it would require a huge amount of effort to restructure the entire contact/story arc system.  Which means you're ending up with some contact bars unfilled or partially filled, which isn't satisfying design to me.  Maybe I'm the only person in the world that feels that way, but it's how I feel.

It's not like the unfilled contact bar represents "you just can't develop a relationship with that character".  There are specifically characters who never become "friends" or "confidants" even if you fill their bar all the way.  The actual end-point for each progress bar is different from person to person.  But the presence of a progress bar suggests....y'know, progress.  Which is frustrating to me to see incomplete without any way to "finish" it.

 

But at the very least, you definitely should be able to gain the progress that is possible though the arcs that are available, and seriously, your contacts should remember you, because...

 

In terms of lore:

 

Yeah, sure, you're rewriting your interactions with the contact.  You retain your experience, your souveneir, but in principle, it's possible somebody else could overwrite your history with that character, except...in every case where it's applicable, other story arcs react to the changes you made when you went through the Ouro arc.  For example, If I do Dark Astoria, and then go back and do Darrin Wade's arc in flashback for the first time, and then do DA again, Sigil will react differently on the replay than she did originally, because she remembers me beating her up for Wade now.  I have CHANGED THE PAST, and can verify that the change stuck, But if I go talk to Wade, we're strangers, even though that's the same change:  You only beat up Sigil and Kadabra *because* Wade asked you to.

 

I have very little doubt that in the head space of the average player, once they go to the time travel place and time travel to change the past and rescue Percy from the Circle of Thorns, in their head, now, that is a thing that happened in the world and they did it.  Going to talk to whichever contact and having them say they don't know you is a break in continuity that they tolerate, I don't think it's the intent of the game developers that "Oh, somebody came along and undid what you did but some of the details stick around because they show up when you do later arcs but it's wibbly wobbly timey wimey stuff and that's why your contact doesn't remember you even though they're the one that told you to do the thing somebody else yelled at you over."

 

I feel like it's way more likely the system was just implemented in a simple way with minimal effort.  Which brings me to...

In terms of code mechanics: 

I know it's possible for an Ouro arc to add progress to the original contact bar, because it *worked that way* for awhile.  I don't know how feasible it is to have Ouro add contacts.  But If nothing else, they could make it so you can add more contacts by just finding and talking to them, which is how at least some of the contacts work anyway.  Adding them manually would be a pain in the butt, but it's better than nothing.

 

 

 

Also we should be able to unlock Mender costume parts.