In the hideout update discussion thread. There is a discussion about why people continue to live in areas controlled by organized crime. That is another discussion but it made me think of a story line which perhaps wouldn't lead to a happy ending. And also question what tools might be used to convey parts of the story between the lines of text.
My initial story line, which I prompted in that thread as well, follows a TPD officer who is looking to take down the organized crime ring who hurt his family as a boy or young man. Because of his joining the TPD he is no longer welcome in his old community which is under the control of of the crime ring. He commissions you to follow up on some leads and gather intel, since you are an unknown face you can travel this area more freely (and you have super powers) So you might follow up on leads and they just aren't panning out. So instead of meeting your eager new TPD officer in the TPD station you start meeting them at a bar and he might be a little/lot depressed as you continue the arc. Naturally as you work against this group your face becomes known so your encounters become more hostile, but it eventually your hostile encounters bear fruit. He sends you off on a mission to distract or gather more information while he takes on a mission of his own. After your mission you come back and your contact is gone. No longer at the station or the bar...end of story arc.
So there are two primary things in that arc that didn't show up very often in COH. A) the contact moved around in this case as the story progressed the contacts movements indicate parts of the story that aren't explicitly stated. That he's is struggling personally with his lack of success. That he's not a totally neat and clean character, that he is flawed. B) the story doesn't have a cut and dry "successful" ending. There was one arc in COH which sort of did this Indigo and Crimson but after Indigo's fate Crimson picks you up quickly and you followup on the story and net a successful ending.
Will COT be able to take on this type of story line? Or is that something that isn't going to be a thing? Would contact movements add interest to the story arcs or just be more difficult? Is there any other mechanic that would help tell stories? One thing that just occurred to me is that in this ever connected world we might get text messages from our contacts or use a smartphone to otherwise interact with contacts. A butt dial and a voicemail might reveal clues to the story arc you are working on.
...my thoughts. Have fun.
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Your end of story arc sounds like a perfect opportunity to initiate part II of the story - finding out what happened to your contact. Can still have a tragic ending. He dies during his mission. Now you have to decide whether to pursue justice or vengeance (or just walk away).
@Grimfox, If the NPC contact moved around to tell the story, then by all means move him around. If the NPC moved around because the developers wanted you to explore different areas or something like that, then we're going into the realm of "why?" Other games have had to do this in long story arcs becasue you outlevel the area where it began. That's a pretty good reason why to move. Using your example, however, I'm all for using the world to tell a story for the story's sake. I can even see putting the contact in an area where the character is underlevelled and so they have to go incognito or have to figure out a way around the mobs.
I think a lot of gameplay shortcuts can be sacrificed at the altar of good storytelling. Happily.
One thing I'm not sure we've covered yet is phasing. If your NPC contact moves, then should he only apprear to you where he is in your particular story arc? Or should he appear in all locations simultaneously, but since you only see him in one location at a time it seems like he moved? Phasing adds complexity to the world. It makes for tighter storytelling, but it also makes it harder to group and adds a whole lot of logic and flowcharting that needs to be tested.
I don't recall CoX implementing phasing. The npc was where the npc had been, was and always would be. Probably the biggest obstacle to grouping in The Elder Scrolls Online was the over-implementation of phasing such that entire world shifts happened as a result of mission triggers that meant no two people ever saw the same world. I would recommend against such a degree of phasing. In fact, I'm actually okay with the NPC contact to exist in several locations simultaneously. That way you can go back to him if one of you have a teammate that hasn't spoken to him yet, for instance.
[hr]I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.
I'm for nearly anything that aids story-telling and increases immersion. However, Grimfox, in your example I get the feeling that you're counting on an alter-ego/civilian identity being available to the player. I don't recall that being confirmed (But I grant that it seems expected) Plus, some character concepts don't have an 'alternate appearance.' (non-human, robotic, super-natural, etc.) This has been pointed out to me on several occasions. But, maybe I'm picking on your example too much. Sorry.
Otherwise, I like the idea of contacts going about their lives when not being our personal message drop. Maybe some contacts could have a short list of 'known haunts' in a general area. Oh! What if our first mission to find that contact was visiting all the haunts first? Maybe we have to ask around in the classic "I'm looking for a guy named..." fashion and having to wade through some jamokes to get the next location. Until we find them.
However, and just plying Devil's Advocate here, there is a valid point about phasing making this difficult during teaming. And there is also a certain amount of predictability necessary in a game to allow an experienced player to play efficiently.
All in all though, I think if used sparingly, some NPCs could add to the general feel of a living city by using a mechanic like this.
One of the "tricks" that SWTOR uses for story telling and moving contracts around is micro-instancing of the contact themselves. You might start the mission when some low level character tells you "General X is waiting for you in their office" which is an instance of a small office containing the contact. As the story progresses you may return to that instance and meet with the contact again or you may meet them in a new instance in a front line command center.
So in my story the "living world contact" would be a junior officer or clerk that would direct you to our investigator in his office. Which would be a discreet instance. Later as the story progressed you would meet your contact in a new instance of a bar. I think for this particular story line having the contact be instanced would be preferable. You wouldn't want 15 heroes piled into an office as you and your contact have a heart to heart about his motivations. Or a bunch of people crowded around a depressed detective bemoaning his poor fortune at a dive bar. Creating a micro instance like this for contact interactions also allowed for new characters to be seamlessly integrated into the story. You could have a meeting with the mayor who would introduce you to the DA or chief of police directly rather than having them locked into a location and having the mayor tell you to "go visit R the DA he should be in his office in the justice center"
Using micro-instancing for contacts like this could allow the devs to play some tricks on the user. If you happened to discover the Bar before meeting your contact you could still enter and simply find it empty. Until you get to the appropriate part of the arc where you would then find the contact.
I think COH did have phasing to a limited degree. That particular arc with Indigo, I believe after she was gone and Crimson picked you up, you could no longer see or contact Indigo. I may be wrong. One downside there is that once the character has been used for that part of the arc, that is it. So the return on investment for that contact is limited to that one ark.
As far as a followup or part 2, I had considered it. But more simply and less conclusively than a full fledged part 2. I thought it might be enough to put a badge with text like "this is the badge of TPD special investigator. It's been smashed and stained" in a warehouse or on the beach or something. It would be a small clue but inconclusive to the finality of the poor detective. I know leaving loose ends is bad story telling. And its a particular type of story telling that drives me nuts. But that's because I always want to know what happens next even if the story is "over" I think this is a story that could really drive someone to really explore a neighborhood and dig into every clue and hint with a passion to find out what happened. And by withholding that final detail you maintain the interest. Also you can't spoil the outcome if there isn't one.
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Warbird snuck a comment in while I was typing, not hard as I am a notoriously slow typist. I don't know that a secret identity is required in that particular story. I think if you wanted to roleplay that, you could. My initial thought was that it was not critical to the story, that the player need a secret identity. Perhaps he could offer the player a temporary cloaking device power that would make them appear to be a local in the community as they gathered information. If being discreet became a necessity. My thought was more a long the lines of the hero was going to go in and do some knocking of heads where the detective who had been marked as a problem individual by the local organized crime gang for joining the TPD would not be able to get close to anything or anyone that might be able to disrupt the the crime bosses in the area. The idea being that this was a lone wolf hero knocking around some thugs and not an investigation by the TPD. It's not a fully flushed story by any means and could go a lot of directions before the "end of arc."
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