I'm a big fan of MMO's in general, and one thing I've always hated is having to run around to find the missions, run across the map to kill X mobs, and run all the way back across the map to turn the quest back in. While this does allow for quest chains, it's time consuming and boring. GW2 handled this well in my opinion, by auto completing the quest as you finished, and mailing you the rewards. I also liked the way they handled completing the quests themselves, having multiple objectives, and being able to pick and choose how you finished. This is something I think CoT could take advantage of. The idea seems to fall in line with what the developers are going for, a "play how you want to play" mmo.
Wed, 10/23/2013 - 13:29
#1
Completing Missions
Having contacts who gave you missions and clues via "cell phone" or in the news media was a feature of CoH/CoV for the last few years of it's life. There was still plenty of running around, but it certainly streamlined the mission completion and reward system.
I never did understand why I have to run all the way back to the contact when the characters live in a universe where they have holo communicators which they use randomly. o.o
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Owner and Big Sister of the Justice Girls -Champions Online-City of Titans-
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Leader of the Ellysyn Dark Ensemble
Indeed. In the last two years (maybe?) the Devs made a pass through all the legacy arcs so that you became a trusted contact sooner and they gave you their cell phone sooner. Though, it didn't properly propagate to all legacy arcs. Arcs that were new or revamped definitely gave you their cell phone much earlier, so much earlier that they defied time by having ancient-times contacts give you their cell phone number. :)
Former Online Community Manager & Forum Moderator
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I hadn't played CoH for a while before the shutdown, so I don't really remember the contacts/missions system. I don't remember the cell phone feature. I played CoV for a bit but I moved away from the game after that.
It was in place before the launch of CoV at least, it was just that contacts, especially blue side, would not give out their cell numbers until you ran several missions for them. Some of them would go nearly an entire arc before giving it out, as I found out running flashback missions. Later arcs would give you the number almost immediately. although it seems crazy now, just the fact that calling the quest-giver to hand in the mission was possible at all was pretty ground-breaking back in the day.
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I never set anything on fire accidentally!
The Titan Legacy - Defender of the Inner Flame
MMO's have come a long way in the 10 or so years since CoH launched, and we're using a really nice current gen engine, so we'll be capable of doing a lot of stuff that may not have been possible in CoH. I think it's safe to say you can expect to see a lot of the quality of life stuff that has become the norm in other mmos to show up in some form in CoT.
[color=#ff0000]Gameplay And Content Team[/color]
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Senior Developer:[i] "Instead of being able to call your contact from wherever you are right away... that's just too 'easy'.. but not wanting to make them trudge through 3 zones to get back to a contact, how about we let players use phone booths to reach their contacts?"[/i]
Twenty-Something Junior Developer:[i] "What's a 'phone booth'"?[/i]
Former Online Community Manager & Forum Moderator
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/cries
To be completely honest in GW2, the renown heart missions would just pop up if you were in range and mail you the reward. Many times the story missions involved you going back to some location to have a bit of conversation to advance the plot, and depending on the mission clear it and get your reward.
Now, The devs all being veteran CoH players at least (and who knows how many other MMOs they've played around with) are going to know our pain. If we need to talk to someone across the city after exiting a mission, I'm pretty confident we can just call them on our cell. But from what's been batted around already, I expect quite a departure from quest-giving NPCs in the first place.
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I never set anything on fire accidentally!
The Titan Legacy - Defender of the Inner Flame
Its the Opposite of a Smart Phone! :)
That's true, I was directly referencing the renown hearts in the open world. The story missions were more for the personal story aspect, so I was leaving those out of consideration. The story missions had a lot of zone changes and running back and forth, but because they were all continuing a single storyline that had a definitive end I didn't mind as much.
Y'know, Those red booths used as waypoints in Warburg that you could break the doors off of. Also, the 'boothless' phones you could find around blueside zones that you cliked for patrol missions.
The plastic tips on the ends of shoelaces are called Aglets; their true purpose is sinister.
Personally, I always thought you should get XP immediately/automatically after completing a mission. I mean, after all, you just had the experience, right? But it made sense to have to "collect" monetary rewards. OTH, I'm all for having my fees "wired to my account". :) I guess it depends what, from a story standpoint, we're supposed to be getting for doing all this hero-ing, anyway.