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Mission Thumbnails, instead of just text?

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Izzy
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Mission Thumbnails, instead of just text?

Would you rather have a thumbnail with the antagonist, showing him/her doing something at a location they normally hang?

Does it need to have a quick animation, around 5 seconds, when you hover the mouse over, or click on the Mission before confirming to accept it?

blacke4dawn
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Instead of what? The whole

Instead of what? The whole text in the detailed view and NPC dialog, or just the title in the mission list and NPC dialog?

Personally I don't really think that MWM can make enough thumbnailes to give every missions it's own unique one that is distinct enough from all others. At least not without including a sequence identifier for stories that span several quests.

Besides, text can convey a lot more details that a thumbnail can in this regard. And trying to communicate which mission one wants to do or are doing is much easier if we have a ready title to use instead of trying to describe a thumbnail, especially for new players.

Radiac
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It would be nice to see at a

It would be nice to see at a glance what a mission is. Like if it's the 4th mission of an arc, it would have that arc's icon and a 4 on it, or something. That would make missions easier to track, because it would save me from having to look up "ok, this is the 'save the guy from the robots mission', is that he 4th or 5th part of the arc...."

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Redlynne
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Thumbnails aren't going to be

Thumbnails aren't going to be helpful enough, methinks.


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Lin Chiao Feng
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Just give me a progress bar

Just give me a progress bar next to the arc's name and I'll be happy:

Castle of the Rooks (####  )
- Find the Lost Pawn

Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...

Huckleberry
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Ah, here we tread that hazy

Ah, here we tread that hazy path between making things efficient for the player and making things immersive for the player.

I've noticed that when I start ignoring mission text, I end up losing interest in the game and then leave the game. But at the same time, I sometimes feel that mission text is just something I have to click through to get going. I have my own internal conflict between moving on with it, and taking the time to read the flavor. I think as our electronically-induced short attention spans get shorter and shorter we will have less and less patience to read flavor text.

What's a game designer to do? Do we skip the flavor text altogether and just put a bunch of animated thumbnails all over the map showing things we could get involved in? I suppose that's not too bad. But we'd be missing out on greater storytelling. It would turn into a whack-a-mole gome where we just go from one task to another without any greater purpose. I'm not interested in that.

And then there are the alignment and reputation aspects of missions. We've discussed this in other threads, but would we want some sort of indicator showing us which missions have reputation rewards and which missions will allow us to modify our alignments?


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.
Lin Chiao Feng
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Along those lines, maybe the

Along those lines, maybe the mission text should be primarily NPC dialog interactions and the mission list window blurbs should be more like a logbook.

But if they start taking text out of the mission list window, I'm gonna lose my place.

Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...

Huckleberry
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Having said all that I said,

Having said all that I said, I think there would be some missions that don't need flavor text.

A smash and grab in progress doesn't need an expositionary narrative into the ill-spent youth of the thief. It needs a hero to jump in and stop him.

On the other hand... the devs have said that clues could be drops from world mobs. That means stopping what appears to be a simple smash-and-grab could open up an actual story line as we learn what the thief was trying to take and from whom.


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.
WarBird
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I don't think the additional

I don't think the additional work of providing thumbnail art for mission briefings would be worth the cost. Even if their only semi-unique, I think they are "click throughs" for most players. Not me, mind, I love the expo text. Heck, one of the things I liked about Champions Online was the little cinematic denouement you'd occasionally get before a boss battle. (bad voice-acting notwithstanding) I believe it was suggested in a long-past thread that once you click "accept" the text gets saved to a personal "journal" that you can refer to later. Seems like the best of both.

I also agree that there should be some kind of 'at-a-glance' reference that tells you what mission arc, what chapter of said arc, alignment effects, etc.

As a side dream, this kind of stuff would be great if it could be accessed from an app. It would be neat if I could log into my character's journal and check out the text I didn't have time to read the night before while rushing around with PUGs.