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Thoughts on Dailies

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Lost Deep
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Thoughts on Dailies

Here's something that I think should be thought about: Dailies. I understand they're normal in MMOs. Well, I have some thoughts about them.

I should start by saying that I don't like dailies. I'm the kind of person who will play a game five hours a day for three days straight, and then not touch it again for a month. That means that "come back tomorrow" kind of things fall flat for me. Sometimes, I don't want to wait for tomorrow. Other times, there will be no tomorrow for a long time.

That isn't to say that I feel daily things shouldn't be in a game. However, I will say that a focus on daily things annoys me. In some games, there's a progress bar on-screen showing how much of the daily task you've done. Not one to generally do dailies, I just find this annoying. I'll turn in the daily task if I happen to finish it, but that would be a nice bonus, not something I target by itself. On the other hand, some daily tasks you need to grind in order to do something. My thought is Neverwinter, where there was some daily quests you could do to get some of the premium currency. I did it once, and then never again because the premium currency wasn't worth the trouble to me.

I guess what I'm saying is, I prefer games that don't assume that doing dalies is the norm. I prefer games where they're there, for that crowd, but they're not intrusive nor do they give out super-special things.

That said, there ARE some daily things that I strongly dislike, and they can be summed up by "you suffer by not playing every day". As an example, some MMOs have systems that reward you for logging in so many days in a row. That's fine, okay. But some of that kind of system will put you back to square 1 if you miss a day. That's a kind of system I dislike. I feel like it's judging me, and since I don't give it enough attention it won't let me have nice things.

Now, on the other hand, there is Guild Wars 2, which has log-in rewards that don't re-set. Every time I log into that game I'm given a little gift, like it's happy to see me back. It's a small thing, but it changes my view of the game immensely.

That's my bias, but what does the community expect from dailies? What are annoying things about dailies from people that do them? How do we want dailies in CoT?

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I am personally of a similar

I am personally of a similar opinion - Dailies should be possible and rewarding, but not essential to enjoying the game. this, I feel, is something that a lot of games flop on in an ill-conceived attempt to involve the players more.

An infinite number of tries doesn't mean that any one of those tries will succeed. I could flip an infinite number of pennies an infinite number of times and, barring genuine randomness, they will never come up "Waffles".

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I'm with you on this one.

I'm with you on this one.

Dailies should be those little extras that a nice to do but not essential to the overall game, ad they certainly shouldn't be "in your face" prominent.

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My memory may well be off,

My memory may well be off, but I don't believe that CoH had dailies. There were still factions for which you could gain reputation and/or currency, although there was no limit on the missions in which you could engage to earn that reputation. Rather than allowing for a handful of missions each day, each of which provides a relatively large reputation / currency reward, any number of other (quite likely repeatable) missions can provide a much smaller reward. In my opinion this is a more elegant approach to such a gating system than dailies. While it provides less control over precisely how quickly a player can achieve the maximum reputation, it also removes any eventual feeling of missing out because a player cannot engage in the dailies for a few days.

Since dailies are often specifically used to gate some of the best gear available in that game, outside of end game content, there's all the more reason to believe such systems - at least as used in WoW and SWTOR, to name two prominent examples - won't be seen in CoT.

Quote:

That said, there ARE some daily things that I strongly dislike, and they can be summed up by "you suffer by not playing every day".

Such log in rewards are fairly common to F2P games to encourage players to log in regularly. Since CoT will be B2P, with an option to subscribe, I rather doubt that MWM will have any such system in place. While I have no strong feelings about such things, I do consider them to be a bit of an irritant.

Quote:

In some games, there's a progress bar on-screen showing how much of the daily task you've done. Not one to generally do dailies, I just find this annoying. I'll turn in the daily task if I happen to finish it, but that would be a nice bonus, not something I target by itself.

In all the games with which I'm familiar a player must actively choose to engage in the dailies, so this comes across as rather nonsensical. Why would you choose to do daily quests if they annoy you and you have no intention of finishing them? I will agree that any system that keeps dailies active and tracks their progress on screen, whether or not the player is interested in dailies, is quite obnoxious. However, I'd be surprised to hear of such a thing existing outside of shovelware.

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CoH had plenty of things with

CoH had plenty of things with timers saying "you can't get full rewards for this again till tomorrow" but not dailies.

NW fixed their login rewards a few months ago, you now don't lose progress if you miss a day (I believe the old timer for that was 30 hours to give you a little leeway).

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I guess MWM can alter these

I guess MWM can alter these timers based on player feedback as they balance things. I wonder if analytics might help here.. to check and see what type of content is getting the most love, and whats being passed over. :{

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Lost Deep wrote:
Lost Deep wrote:

That isn't to say that I feel daily things shouldn't be in a game. However, I will say that a focus on daily things annoys me.

"Treadmill" Dailies that "require" you to get on and do your thing according to a schedule, lest you "fall off" and lose your progress, transform an activity that ought to be fun and optional into a Job Requirement. The most common motivation for this is simple repeating grinding which you replay because you HAVE TO replay. It's a band-aid patch over the simple fact that there isn't enough Other Content to fulfill the exorbitant grinding requirements required to reach an objective somewhere else.

Lost Deep wrote:

I guess what I'm saying is, I prefer games that don't assume that doing dalies is the norm. I prefer games where they're there, for that crowd, but they're not intrusive nor do they give out super-special things.

Available, yes ... default norm assumption and requirement, no.

Lost Deep wrote:

That said, there ARE some daily things that I strongly dislike, and they can be summed up by "you suffer by not playing every day". As an example, some MMOs have systems that reward you for logging in so many days in a row. That's fine, okay. But some of that kind of system will put you back to square 1 if you miss a day. That's a kind of system I dislike. I feel like it's judging me, and since I don't give it enough attention it won't let me have nice things.

Agreed. That's essentially an enforcement mechanism. If you don't play OUR content often enough to meet OUR standards, then you're just going to have to suffer for not playing OUR game often enough for US!

The one thing that you can NEVER assume in online gaming is that your Players will play the game "according to schedule" in any way. Players will progress at their own rate, in their own time, for their own reasons and motivations, and FORCING the issue is NOT something that makes a game better by DEMANDING that Players "dance attendance on the game" rather than the other way around.

Or to put it another way ... Wife Aggro Happens.

Lost Deep wrote:

What does the community expect from dailies?

Simplest answer would be to say ... Newspaper/Police Scanner type Missions as well as Mayhem/Bank Robbery type Missions. In other words, the "repeatable" content.

Lost Deep wrote:

How do we want dailies in CoT?

The Tip Mission precedent of City of Heroes makes for a remarkably decent model to emulate.

blacke4dawn wrote:

Dailies should be those little extras that a nice to do but not essential to the overall game, ad they certainly shouldn't be "in your face" prominent.

Agreed. Useful, but non-essential is the balance to strike.

Darth Fez wrote:

My memory may well be off, but I don't believe that CoH had dailies.

Link: Tips
You could do 5 Tip Missions in one day, but each one had a 20 hour cooldown before you could do another. This then meant that it functionally took 2 days to do 10 Tip Missions and get a Morality Mission.

Not exactly a "daily" Mission as defined by most games, but close enough for our purposes.


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Redlynne wrote:
Redlynne wrote:

My memory may well be off, but I don't believe that CoH had dailies.
Link: Tips
You could do 5 Tip Missions in one day, but each one had a 20 hour cooldown before you could do another. This then meant that it functionally took 2 days to do 10 Tip Missions and get a Morality Mission.
Not exactly a "daily" Mission as defined by most games, but close enough for our purposes.

Ah, yeah. Those were a good example of a gating system that made sense to me. An alignment/faction change ought to carry a certain significance so I can understand if limitations are put in place to enhance its gravitas (and prevent people from bouncing back and forth willy-nilly). It also played to the expectation that such changes are typically gradual, rather than the character deciding to become good / evil while buying a milkshake.

Heck, in contrast the only way to change factions in WoW remains spending $30. I'll take having to spend a few days playing the game to achieve the same result.

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On the subject of the tip

On the subject of the tip missions, radio/newspapers, repeatable missions from the contact in Dark Astoria, etc that CoX had: I think if you're designing something to be a repeatable missions from the get-go, then the onus is on the designer to make those missions sound like things that could keep happening over and over a lot, not one and done events. Like "stop The Guy from stealing the Doohickey of Doom") should be a mission that you get from a contact and do one time to completion, not a thing you keep getting over and over as a tip. How many times is that specific Guy going to try to steal that specific Doohickey anyway? I would expect that once you stop that guy one time, he's in jail or whatever and at worst someone ELSE tries to steal the Doohickey the next time.

I think such missions should be somewhat avoided in favor of missions where the goals goals are those that would lend themselves to repeatable tasks, like "Go to door map and clear out the random thugs, AGAIN" or "go to a specified outdoor location and defeat X of a certain type of badguy faction" which were missions we got from contacts in CoX that SOUNDED really repeatable (the world will always make more thugs) but instead the repeatable missions we got were all these really specific "Stop Evilo from perfecting the Transmogrophon Formula and plunging the world into a thousand years of darkness." types of things that you KNOW aren't just going to happen again and again after you defeat the guy one time. As fun as it is, and it was a lot of fun, it get's a little immersion-breaking to be be fighting the same Doc Quantum in the same explosive-riddled warehouse map to discover the same shocker twist at the end every time. Missions written like that should be things you do once on a character, not things you would repeatedly do over and over. I mean, they didn't let you repeatedly do (to completion) the majority of missions from contacts that you did in CoX, but the tips and so forth weren't really written for repeatability despite being mechanically intended as such.

So from an immersion perspective, I would think it's better to have one-of event missions like "Stop X from doing Y" be the stuff of missions you only do one time on a given toon (if at all) and then have have stuff that sounds repeatable be repeatable, like make the dailies more "kill quota" etc.

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I agree that for repeatable

I agree that for repeatable missions the devs should at least tip their hats to some differentiation. Having a somewhat ad-lib system like "stop _____ from doing _____" should be feasible, at this point, especially if switching out the blanks is no more difficult than changing a few fields in a spreadsheet. Change the names, change the McGuffin, change the outfits, and have some different set pieces, and presto, ostensibly different missions. There'll still be some repetition but it's definitely a step up from, "And that's the fifth time I've stopped McPedro from raiding the garden center. Today."

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Ultimately, I think it would

Ultimately, I think it would be good if you were going to have repeatable missions where it's "Stop {insert named guy here) from doing (insert bad thing here)" and it's just a map you go to and defeat the end boss etc, that;s fine, just make it a different end boss like every time, and have like 20-100 differnet named end bosses such that you almost never get the same one twice. That or make it randomize the named bosses like a deck of cards so that it doesn't give you the same one twice unless you've already done all of them once.

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Like Newspaper/Radio missions

Like Newspaper/Radio missions. I always enjoyed saving Ultraguy's Girlfriend and Lucy Dreamtime and Doctor Steven 'I'm only a surgeon' Strange. Fun stuff.

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Fireheart wrote:
Fireheart wrote:

Like Newspaper/Radio missions. I always enjoyed saving Ultraguy's Girlfriend and Lucy Dreamtime and Doctor Steven 'I'm only a surgeon' Strange. Fun stuff.
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My favourite was the rocky horror themed one. (Rescue Dr Frank N Scott ?)

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I'm thinking there was one

I'm thinking there was one where you had to get the "Overation Ocillthruster" or something. Reference to the 80s sci-fi/comedy movie Buckaroo Bonsai (Peter Weller's OTHER iconic character of nerddom, along with Robocop).

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Radiac wrote:
Radiac wrote:

I'm thinking there was one where you had to get the "Overation Ocillthruster" or something. Reference to the 80s sci-fi/comedy movie Buckaroo Bonsai (Peter Weller's OTHER iconic character of nerddom, along with Robocop).

Also the tech/natural DO for intangibility was the Oscillation Overthruster

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Technically the merit system

Technically the merit system would be dallies. It functioned the same way as other dallies for mmo's

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Fireheart wrote:
Fireheart wrote:

Like Newspaper/Radio missions. I always enjoyed saving Ultraguy's Girlfriend and Lucy Dreamtime and Doctor Steven 'I'm only a surgeon' Strange. Fun stuff.
Be Well!
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Darth Fez wrote:
Darth Fez wrote:

In all the games with which I'm familiar a player must actively choose to engage in the dailies, so this comes across as rather nonsensical. Why would you choose to do daily quests if they annoy you and you have no intention of finishing them? I will agree that any system that keeps dailies active and tracks their progress on screen, whether or not the player is interested in dailies, is quite obnoxious. However, I'd be surprised to hear of such a thing existing outside of shovelware.

There's something small in an upper corner in GW2, and while it's small and ignorable it's still a little annoying. Also in GW2 there's a daily window in the windows that pop up every time you get on, but those are (at their core) a different issue.

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I'm in agreement with the

I'm in agreement with the general consensus that being "forced" to repeat content or do the same monotonous task over and over just to "keep up" is bad and would be a serious blow to the enjoyment of the game.

I liked the ability in CoX of jumping in quick when I had a few minutes, grabbing a radio/newspaper mission, and jumping back out. Without feeling like I was missing something or guilty because I wasn't constantly tracking down some major crime organization.

Also, +1 to the hope that the content writers can come up with a roster of repeatable tip missions that don't "feel" like the same mission over and over. I had the impression that much of that content was going to be procedurally generated, so I hope that whatever algorithms go into that are sufficiently complex. Or something. :)

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I wouldn't say "sufficiently

I wouldn't say "sufficiently complex" so much as being "sufficiently diverse" instead.

I mean ... think about it. How many different TYPES of Missions did City of Heroes feature?
Go to Mission Door
Street Sweep
Deliver Pizza

That was very nearly the extent of the Missions you could be given. Pizza Runs were Missions that were essentially "run around the map and click the glowies" types of affairs. Street Sweeping were just Defeat X number of Y Foe types in Z region. Everything else was a Go to Mission Door deal.

Inside the Mission Doors, you had everything from Defeat All to the much more limited Defeat "Room" (which included the Boss) or even just Defeat Boss Spawn Group. There was also the Click All Glowies in addition to the Rescues and Escorts Back To Mission Entrance.

That was essentially the menu of options for what you had to DO in when it came to Missions. It's actually a pretty short list. Sometimes you'd get combinations of the above, but that was rare. Which then begs the question ... what ELSE could be done (easily) in a MMORPG setting that would qualify as a Mission Objective? What other options can be put on the table?


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I like the formula Marvel

I like the formula Marvel Heroes uses. Many varied types of daily missions but all require killing tons of bad guys

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Personally I like having a

Personally I like having a selection of activities for a daily, but only have to complete a few to earn the reward.

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Redlynne wrote:
Redlynne wrote:

I wouldn't say "sufficiently complex" so much as being "sufficiently diverse" instead.
I mean ... think about it. How many different TYPES of Missions did City of Heroes feature?
Go to Mission Door
Street Sweep
Deliver Pizza
That was very nearly the extent of the Missions you could be given. Pizza Runs were Missions that were essentially "run around the map and click the glowies" types of affairs. Street Sweeping were just Defeat X number of Y Foe types in Z region. Everything else was a Go to Mission Door deal.
Inside the Mission Doors, you had everything from Defeat All to the much more limited Defeat "Room" (which included the Boss) or even just Defeat Boss Spawn Group. There was also the Click All Glowies in addition to the Rescues and Escorts Back To Mission Entrance.
That was essentially the menu of options for what you had to DO in when it came to Missions. It's actually a pretty short list. Sometimes you'd get combinations of the above, but that was rare. Which then begs the question ... what ELSE could be done (easily) in a MMORPG setting that would qualify as a Mission Objective? What other options can be put on the table?

I'm thinking more about the "diversity" (better word, yes) of missions AFTER you open the door. I concur with your general list there, too.

So, I'm wondering how much can actually be generated procedurally. In CoH we all became familiar with the roster of possible maps for "door missions." Can maps be procedurally generated and still make sense? I recall the Devs mentioning something about architecture being a bit more realistic, i.e. no tardis buildings.

I'm also intrigued by your final question. When I think of classic comic book plots/missions the list is also rather short. Akin to the plot of your average summer action movie. ;) Maybe we COULD do better.

Since I'm referring in general to "Random Door Missions" the outcome of each one individually should not have long-term or city-wide consequences. And I believe they should be "Failable." where the bad guy gets away, or you get saved by a Named Lore Hero at the end.

Just as a thought provoker, here are some of my ideas for plot formulas to add to the list:

HEROIC

Race Against Time: Either the entire mission or just the final room is on a clock.

Defend the Innocent: Hold off an attack (Either one Big Baddie, or a Swarm) until civilians have escaped

The Rundown: Chase the Villain as he flees through a linear map (tunnels, etc.) and their minions try to stop you.

Insert the Specialist: Variation on "escort" mission. Defend a specialist as you infiltrate a base so they can perform a specific task. (possibly a solo mission variation using stealth?)

VILLAINOUS VARIANTS:

Terrorize the Public: Attack Police/Security until Heroes arrive, then escape/defeat them.

Intercept a Drop: Chase a courier as he flees through a linear map (tunnels, etc.) and security tries to stop you.

Insert the Specialist: Variation on "escort" mission. Defend a specialist as you infiltrate a base so they can perform a specific task. (Really a straight forward substitution from Heroic)

These are just a few, and could be easily combined with others, including the original few mentioned in your post, to provide even more diversity.

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Redlynne wrote:
Redlynne wrote:

I wouldn't say "sufficiently complex" so much as being "sufficiently diverse" instead.
I mean ... think about it. How many different TYPES of Missions did City of Heroes feature?
Go to Mission Door
Street Sweep
Deliver Pizza
That was very nearly the extent of the Missions you could be given. Pizza Runs were Missions that were essentially "run around the map and click the glowies" types of affairs. Street Sweeping were just Defeat X number of Y Foe types in Z region. Everything else was a Go to Mission Door deal.
Inside the Mission Doors, you had everything from Defeat All to the much more limited Defeat "Room" (which included the Boss) or even just Defeat Boss Spawn Group. There was also the Click All Glowies in addition to the Rescues and Escorts Back To Mission Entrance.
That was essentially the menu of options for what you had to DO in when it came to Missions. It's actually a pretty short list. Sometimes you'd get combinations of the above, but that was rare. Which then begs the question ... what ELSE could be done (easily) in a MMORPG setting that would qualify as a Mission Objective? What other options can be put on the table?

I'm thinking more about the "diversity" (better word, yes) of missions AFTER you open the door. I concur with your general list there, too.

So, I'm wondering how much can actually be generated procedurally. In CoH we all became familiar with the roster of possible maps for "door missions." Can maps be procedurally generated and still make sense? I recall the Devs mentioning something about architecture being a bit more realistic, i.e. no tardis buildings.

I'm also intrigued by your final question. When I think of classic comic book plots/missions the list is also rather short. Akin to the plot of your average summer action movie. ;) Maybe we COULD do better.

Since I'm referring in general to "Random Door Missions" the outcome of each one individually should not have long-term or city-wide consequences. And I believe they should be "Failable." where the bad guy gets away, or you get saved by a Named Lore Hero at the end.

Just as a thought provoker, here are some of my ideas for plot formulas to add to the list:

HEROIC

Race Against Time: Either the entire mission or just the final room is on a clock.

Defend the Innocent: Hold off an attack (Either one Big Baddie, or a Swarm) until civilians have escaped

The Rundown: Chase the Villain as he flees through a linear map (tunnels, etc.) and their minions try to stop you.

Insert the Specialist: Variation on "escort" mission. Defend a specialist as you infiltrate a base so they can perform a specific task. (possibly a solo mission variation using stealth?)

VILLAINOUS VARIANTS:

Terrorize the Public: Attack Police/Security until Heroes arrive, then escape/defeat them.

Intercept a Drop: Chase a courier as he flees through a linear map (tunnels, etc.) and security tries to stop you.

Insert the Specialist: Variation on "escort" mission. Defend a specialist as you infiltrate a base so they can perform a specific task. (Really a straight forward substitution from Heroic)

These are just a few, and could be easily combined with others, including the original few mentioned in your post, to provide even more diversity.

Redlynne
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WarBird wrote:
WarBird wrote:

So, I'm wondering how much can actually be generated procedurally. In CoH we all became familiar with the roster of possible maps for "door missions." Can maps be procedurally generated and still make sense? I recall the Devs mentioning something about architecture being a bit more realistic, i.e. no tardis buildings.

Those two things are going to run into conflict REAL FAST. Most of the instanced maps we had in City of Heroes were the size of whole city blocks. Makes it hard to fit all that into the footprint of a single building. Plus a lot of buildings (cough, warehouses, cough) ought to have been gigantic "single room" spaces, judging by the exteriors.

At first, I used to think that the maps for City of Heroes WERE process generated, since they featured recognizable "modules" that simply snapped together. There was the infamous Wedding Cake module in the narrow caves. There was the Portals module that could be found in Oranbega. There was the Experimental Lab module with the four destructible experiments that could be found in the Tech Lab. There were sections of Warehouse modules that got reused so much we didn't even think twice about them when we saw them.

But City of Heroes didn't generate its instance maps using modular pieces that got assembled and stitched together on the fly. Instead, the game simply had a huge library of pre-generated maps (that reused all those modules) with everything set up and sorted and proofed by QA to make sure everything worked right. So there was simply a big enough library to use a RNG on to pick a (complete) map from the pre-approved list to meet the need. That way, even though specific rooms and corridors and tunnels were all easily recognizable when seen, the overall layout would "feel" as if it were random (or at least, less predictable).

That's why some Missions featured maps that were ALWAYS done up a specific way, because that specific map was called for, as opposed to biasing the process of creatively assembling the map components in a way that consistently yielded that result.

WarBird wrote:

I'm also intrigued by your final question. When I think of classic comic book plots/missions the list is also rather short. Akin to the plot of your average summer action movie. ;) Maybe we COULD do better.

Let's just say that we've got a bit of an incentive to do better. ^_~

The tricky part though is figuring out HOW. I say that because whatever the basic "shape" of the objective is, it has to be something that is easily reduced down into computer game terms that are both easy to track (I'm thinking bookkeeping here) and easy to explain (description text).

WarBird wrote:

Race Against Time: Either the entire mission or just the final room is on a clock.

The problem with this one is that you can NEVER as a designer assume that you will have the full and undivided attention of your Players for ANY length of time. Wife aggro happens. Bio happens. Phone calls happen. To put it mildly, Reality Intrudes ... and when it does, the Game will punish you for it if you're racing against the clock.

Furthermore, a vast overwhelming majority of "race the clock" scenarios boil down to being one thing ... DPS Checks. Which is "fine" for Scrappers and Blasters, but not quite so fine for types who aren't oriented around maximum DPS. Mayhem Missions ALMOST fell into this trap, but rescued themselves from it by having conditions which could ADD time to the clock.

Bottom line: any kind of Time Limit situation needs to be extra careful in its design and implementation.

I remember there was a Mission (I forget which one) against Anti-Matter's mechanica in Peregrine Island that had a 10 minute time limit on it. The map was HUGE (think 4 elevators to get to the Boss) and there were spawn groups at almost every intersection and in every room. It usually took at least 1-2 minutes just to get to the Mission Door, during which the timer was counting down. Only way to succeed at the Mission was to race through it and try to find the objective ... which was an NPC Foe you needed to Defeat (plus Minions). The run to find the objective usually took a good 5 minutes of running around searching (even with Reveal Map!). So by the time you found the objective, it was a DPS Check just to succeed at the Mission.

General consensus was that the Mission was just BADLY Designed™. There were a couple hundred Foes inside the instance, and you had to ignore more than 95% of them to succeed. The time crunch was also so punitive as to prevent ANY kind of finesse of the situation. It was a 10 minute pressure cooker, and if you were a squishy, you simply couldn't contribute because there was no TIME to protect you while you did contribute.

Now ... giving you 10 minutes to get to a specific street address to intercept a courier before (or after?) they make their Drop on the street? THAT could be done, and would be a lot more interesting ... particularly if the objective is a "No Witnesses" type of deal where you need to "pop" them without being spotted (by other hostile NPCs in the area).

WarBird wrote:

Defend the Innocent: Hold off an attack (Either one Big Baddie, or a Swarm) until civilians have escaped

Sounds more like a variant on the No Win Scenario. Essentially an Endurance Test. Note that this is functionally very similar to what Rikti Invasions and Zombie Apocalypse Events were supposed to be, in public spaces.

WarBird wrote:

The Rundown: Chase the Villain as he flees through a linear map (tunnels, etc.) and their minions try to stop you.

I dislike this sort of thing because it devolves into a "get dragged past all the ambushes" style of thing. The alternative interpretation, of course, is The Chase Scene, and is typically done with vehicles (because, Travel Powers) ...

WarBird wrote:

Insert the Specialist: Variation on "escort" mission. Defend a specialist as you infiltrate a base so they can perform a specific task. (possibly a solo mission variation using stealth?)

So long as I can "command" the escorted NPC the same way a Mastermind commands their Pets, then I have no problem with this sort of thing. Heck, you can even do the "puzzle" of needing to time commanding the NPC to get through the Death Traps.


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Geez, Red. So you agree that

Geez, Red. So you agree that we need better, more different scenarios. Then you go on to practically say that nothing else will work. Of COURSE certain types of scenario will require careful design. Of COURSE players will figure out a way to exploit different aspects. That's what we're talking about here. Having a greater variety of challenges to figure out would be a Good Thing (TM), wouldn't it?

Oh, wait. Is this another "If it's not my idea, it stinks." type situation? How would you approach the challenge of differentiating scenarios?

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WarBird wrote:
WarBird wrote:

Geez, Red. So you agree that we need better, more different scenarios. Then you go on to practically say that nothing else will work.

No, that's not what I said. If anything, I'm saying that all the "easy" methods are known and proven, meaning there isn't a whole lot of low hanging fruit left out there to harvest.

Kill X to Gather Y.
Go to Mission Door.
Pizza Run to Click The Glowies and Make The Deliveries.

These are all easy things to program and explain. Beyond that, things get more complicated in a hurry. They get more complicated in ways that are either difficult to program (and track) or are difficult to explain clearly without a wall of text (especially when you haven't got room to show that wall of text the whole time). That's just the shape of things.

WarBird wrote:

Oh, wait. Is this another "If it's not my idea, it stinks." type situation? How would you approach the challenge of differentiating scenarios?

WarBird, are you trying to be insulting? Because if you aren't I'll give you a pass on this one.


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Redlynne wrote:
Redlynne wrote:

WarBird wrote:
Geez, Red. So you agree that we need better, more different scenarios. Then you go on to practically say that nothing else will work.
No, that's not what I said. If anything, I'm saying that all the "easy" methods are known and proven, meaning there isn't a whole lot of low hanging fruit left out there to harvest.
Kill X to Gather Y.
Go to Mission Door.
Pizza Run to Click The Glowies and Make The Deliveries.
These are all easy things to program and explain. Beyond that, things get more complicated in a hurry. They get more complicated in ways that are either difficult to program (and track) or are difficult to explain clearly without a wall of text (especially when you haven't got room to show that wall of text the whole time). That's just the shape of things.
WarBird wrote:
Oh, wait. Is this another "If it's not my idea, it stinks." type situation? How would you approach the challenge of differentiating scenarios?
WarBird, are you trying to be insulting? Because if you aren't I'll give you a pass on this one.

See, you just did it again. You criticize based on an opinion. I honestly don't see why the simple scenarios I proposed are harder to explain than the existing three you mention. I just did it in one sentence. And I'm afraid you'll have to explain to me why they are more difficult to program.

Personally, I'm just offering ideas to help the Devs out and generate additional input on the forums. I'm not trying to decide what they think is or isn't worthwhile to pursue. And I'll point out that while you seem to agree that more and better scenario templates would be welcome, you have shot down any suggested additions without offering alternatives or ways to make them viable. Tsk, not very constructive.

And no, I'm not trying to insult you *personally*, just making fun of a general tendency I see in forums like this. You know, where folks are trying to help out and be positive, and some troll just keeps shooting down ideas as if they had some kind of superior insight into what the devs are working on. :)

And I don't really need a pass, one way or the other. But thanks for the offer!

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WarBird wrote:
WarBird wrote:

And no, I'm not trying to insult you *personally*, just making fun of a general tendency I see in forums like this. You know, where folks are trying to help out and be positive, and some troll just keeps shooting down ideas as if they had some kind of superior insight into what the devs are working on. :)

Wait, do we Have trolls like that?

Be Well!
Fireheart

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Fireheart wrote:
Fireheart wrote:

WarBird wrote:
And no, I'm not trying to insult you *personally*, just making fun of a general tendency I see in forums like this. You know, where folks are trying to help out and be positive, and some troll just keeps shooting down ideas as if they had some kind of superior insight into what the devs are working on. :)

Wait, do we Have trolls like that?
Be Well!
Fireheart

You don't know about the trolls?!?!? I can see you have a lot to learn from me, young paduan, so just sit there while I insult your inferior knowledge of "how these things work" and give you an edjumacation ;)

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Just for the record, nobody

Just for the record, nobody on this thread has in the past ever typed "how these things work" and I was not directly quoting anyone specifically. I was using "fake quotes" again, as I am apt to do occasionally. There I just did it again. I put the words "fake" and "quotes" in fake quotes as a way of explaining how I use fake quotes a lot.

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WarBird wrote:
WarBird wrote:

See, you just did it again. You criticize based on an opinion.

Huh?

WarBird wrote:

I honestly don't see why the simple scenarios I proposed are harder to explain than the existing three you mention. I just did it in one sentence. And I'm afraid you'll have to explain to me why they are more difficult to program.

Fine then ... let's look at what you suggested, again.

WarBird wrote:

So, I'm wondering how much can actually be generated procedurally. In CoH we all became familiar with the roster of possible maps for "door missions." Can maps be procedurally generated and still make sense? I recall the Devs mentioning something about architecture being a bit more realistic, i.e. no tardis buildings.

CAN it be done? Sure.
Can it be done EASILY? Depends on other factors …

If you want no "bigger on the inside than on the outside" structures (I'm looking at YOU Terra Volta Zone!) then you're already setting up constraints and limitations … namely the Form Factors of the buildings in the city. You essentially need to structure the range of possible interiors to "fit" within a range of possible exteriors. That adds complexity. Complexity isn't necessarily "easy" to account for.

Or to put it another way … There's No Free Lunch.

And that's before we even get to the notion that it ought to be possible to program procedures to never make "mistakes" when stitching pre-fab modules together when creating randomized maps. Any Base Builder will tell you it's possible to do that, but the larger (and more complex) the map gets, the harder it is to "proof" that there will be no conflicts. You can simplify things down into a sort of "Illuminati Cards" style of stitching modules together …

… but then you still have to worry about "sprawl" and how much of a footprint you can put onto a single "level" of a building structure internally (just like with Base Plots).

Remember, I only said that doing this would be complex and complicated, not that it would be impossible.

WarBird wrote:

Race Against Time: Either the entire mission or just the final room is on a clock.

As I mentioned, the notion that the game can lay claim to a Player's undivided attention isn't necessarily true or wise to make. So doing an entire mission against a clock turns the exercise into a haste vs waste situation.

Let's also not forget that "racing against the clock" also means "eliminate the socializing" such that people aren't pausing to chat and enjoy themselves along the way. Much like how Fury decay turned every Brute into a less than optimal socializer, countdown timers will incentivize people to NOT stop and smell the flowers (so to speak).

That said, setting off a timer in the final room (think Deathtrap) certainly does have merit, particularly if designed to be completed in 10 minutes (or preferably 5 minutes) or less. Why? Because the longer the exposure to the countdown timer, the more likely that a participant is going to have something call them away from attending to the game.

In all fairness, this sort of thing was best implemented as the ending of the Ernesto Hess Task Force where after defeating the Final Boss you needed to exit the map in 30 seconds or be caught in the explosion. That was literally a Deathtrap situation with a countdown timer ... and a very short one at that ... to flee from a Load Bearing Boss.

WarBird wrote:

Defend the Innocent: Hold off an attack (Either one Big Baddie, or a Swarm) until civilians have escaped

These are a staple of comic books. They are also an objective that tends to favor a subset of builds, with the Herd & Burn merely being one of the most obvious. Not everyone's build is well designed for a Stand & Stick to hold back the tide.

That said, there is something to this which could make for an interesting flavor of street encounter, potentially as a part of an Event (see: Rikti and Zombie).

WarBird wrote:

The Rundown: Chase the Villain as he flees through a linear map (tunnels, etc.) and their minions try to stop you.

At its heart, this is really just a "rush through the Ambushes" type of setup. Essentially a Chase Scene. Balancing such a scenario will be tricky … especially if you're trying to cater to both the DPS monster and Stealth monster crowds in somewhat equal measure.

I guess the thing that I'd object to this structure for a Mission on the grounds that it would kind of feel like the Player is being "railroaded" into playing the game a certain way … in part because the path to follow (i.e. the Objective) actually IS, for all intents and purposes, riding on rails.

This sort of Mission might perhaps be more interesting if it was more of a "chase on a speeding train" setup where not only is the "Boss" you're after moving, but so is the "map" in that it's in motion the whole way.

WarBird wrote:

Insert the Specialist: Variation on "escort" mission. Defend a specialist as you infiltrate a base so they can perform a specific task. (possibly a solo mission variation using stealth?)

Let me CONTROL the movements/actions of the NPC and I've got fewer reasons to resent this setup. Let the NPC be a suicidal IDIOT who wants nothing more than to get ME killed and I will resent this objective with a rather pure hatred. Somehow, I don't think I'm alone in that assessment.

WarBird wrote:

Terrorize the Public: Attack Police/Security until Heroes arrive, then escape/defeat them.

Mayhem Mission.

WarBird wrote:

Intercept a Drop: Chase a courier as he flees through a linear map (tunnels, etc.) and security tries to stop you.

Same issues as the "rush through ambushes" type setup above, and for the same reasons. Not every build is going to be ideally suited to a steamroller rushrushrush style of operation, particularly when Solo.

And then there's use of Teleport Foe …

Then again, there's always the more "pure" version of the Chase which relies on multiple means of mobility, forcing Players to improvise in order to keep up. The Granddaddy Chase Scene of them all has to be in Doctor Who: Planet of the Spiders Part 2 … where most of the episode is devoted to a single chase scene involving use of:

… and BOTH of these …

ANY chase scene that involves use of two cars (one retro, one futuristic), a gyrocopter, a hapless cop in a patrol car, a speedboat AND and hovercraft(!) is a pretty darn good chase scene! Gets even better when they reshuffle who is driving what TWICE!

Except … how would you "do" something like that in City of Titans? Everyone has Travel Powers. How "challenging" can a race/chase be when everyone has Travel Powers, instead of needing to rely on "mounts" (or vehicles) in order to move faster than a shuffling run?

When you're following a script in a movie, TV show or even in a comic book, chase scenes can be exciting to watch (even on replay). But in a game, where how "fast" you can move around (and how) is determined by your character's build choices … how much fun is that going to be to participate in? And how can you structure a chase scene like that when dealing with a Team situation, as opposed to Solo pursuit? Just be faster than the fastest PC? How is that fair, let alone fun? Who wants to run a race that is "decided" even before it has begun?

Of course, the counterpoint to that is the "obstacle course" … complete with destructible terrain so as to deny shortest route pathing to your objective. But when you've got Fly in the mix of Travel Powers, how effective can that be?

In a scripted scenario, this works … and movies and comic books all go according to script. In a MMORPG, unless you're willing to railroad your Players, you aren't dealing with a "script" per se, unless if you're willing to railroad your Players into playing the game a very specific way (lest they go "off script" and spoil the exercise). This is why I see this sort of Mission structure as being inherently unstable and poorly suited to MMORPG gameplay.

WarBird wrote:

Insert the Specialist: Variation on "escort" mission. Defend a specialist as you infiltrate a base so they can perform a specific task. (Really a straight forward substitution from Heroic)

Again, depending on how much control I as a Player can exert over the NPC to be protected, this can either be fun (Mastermind level of control) or aggravating (brain dead Fusionette on a suicide mission).

WarBird wrote:

Personally, I'm just offering ideas to help the Devs out and generate additional input on the forums.

Which is laudable … but you can't just assume that these kinds of things will work for everyone (or in this case, every build). Sort of like how simultaneous glowie clicks only work when you've got a Team, not as a Soloist.

Just remember that there are no experimental failures. There's only more data.


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Ah Red...I finally met a

Ah Red...I finally met a woman who types more than I do lol

I remember when Star Wars was cool...a long, long time ago...

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Comicsluvr wrote:
Comicsluvr wrote:

Ah Red...I finally met a woman who types more than I do lol

Mmm, no you didn't.

Be Well!
Fireheart

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Okay, Red. I'm not going to

Okay, Red. I'm not going to try and address your post quote by quote.

First, if you look at my original post I'm not asking for buildings to have realistic internal dimensions. I recalled (perhaps erroneously) that the Devs were thinking of that as a goal. But I wondered that such a thing was possible if generated procedurally. That's all. I personally don't care either way. Though I'd admit to slight bias for realistically positioned rooms, etc. So let's set that aside. Sorry if that wasn't clear.

My problem here is that while you're full of reasons why other scenarios are apparently problematic your suggestions for changes amount to complete departures from what my experience, and your own criticisms, say are simple and easy to program. Multiple vehicles? We don't even HAVE vehicles at this point. An instanced scenario (at least I thought that was what we were talking about) that somehow moves through the open world? I'm not suggesting that every scenario needs to break new ground as far as programming, just "feel" a little different during play. And I don't need every single mission to be vastly different from all the others. Just an occasional break from the predominant 1) Enter mission, 2) follow corridors, beating up minions, 3) find boss, beat up boss, 4a) Collect object/information 4b) Rescue innocent 4c) Click glowie(s) 5) Exit, collect reward

The Obstacle Course idea sounds fun. And without getting too specific in design as far as what type of damage a character needs to do, or what their travel power is, I can think of any number of easy ways to design around those concerns.

What you refer to as "railroading" a player, I can just as easily view as "presenting a specific narrative." A chase is a chase, true. If that's what the story calls for, I don't see a problem with designing the scenario so that it 'feels' like a chase. Even if that means a slightly artificial mechanic to make happen.

Finally, I don't require (or assume) that every scenario be "ideal" for every archetype or build. That rather negates the concept of 'ideal'. In fact, I'd rather they weren't. I believe that a character should occasionally struggle with some missions, but also find others that are well-suited to their strengths. That just comes down to having a sufficient mix and variety so that those occasions are sufficiently rare that the game isn't entirely frustrating. Designing toward some kind of 'ideal' just means breaking it down to "equally easy." Not interested. Might as well play Chutes and Ladders.

So do you, or anyone else, have any practical suggestions to expand the types of missions we might expect? That's all I'm trying to get to. If my suggestions aren't viable, what is?

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WarBird wrote:
WarBird wrote:

So do you, or anyone else, have any practical suggestions to expand the types of missions we might expect? That's all I'm trying to get to. If my suggestions aren't viable, what is?

THAT is the 64k XP question.
The answer to it requires knowing more about the structure of the game than we do right now, so as to know what we've got to work with and the space we have to do something with it. What are the resources, and what are the limitations? Heck, simply knowing what kind of scripting (LUA, etc.) would be available will completely skew things, so the answers are kind of non-trivial.

Right now, best we can do is wait and see what's cooking behind the scenes ... which is hardly a satisfying answer to the question you're posing. In the absence of such detailed knowledge, we're left with guesswork and bare bones simplicity that leaves almost no meat left to work with.


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