The Mission System

Hamma · 2011-07-12, 10:28 PM

This hasn't been discussed a ton on the forums and I was curious what people think of the Missions system that has been mentioned? As far as we know it will include squad missions, outfit missions, continental missions and global missions. With various leaders able to insert their own missions into the frey for people to pick up.

To me, this seems extremely powerful. I am really excited for what this promises. Really it throws away the garbage CR system and replaces it with something more useful that could have actual rewards rather than some dude spamming a chat channel.

What do you guys think?

2coolforu · 2011-07-12, 10:44 PM

It sounds awesome, not many people listened to CR5's beyond "Fight is now at this continent, zerg there". With dynamic, player created missions we might see people actually being able to direct the correct amount of resources to the fights that need them so we will have less 'ghost hack an entire continent' and more 'Awesome rallying defences'

It may also give Planetside the direction that some people need, some newbies would be confused by the total lack of 'official' objectives and goals in Planetside but a mission system might give players the direction they desire.

Baneblade · 2011-07-12, 10:48 PM

As long as the mission system can keep up with the flow of battle and the dynamic theatre.

I still think the good CRs are valuable. But it is hard to keep bad ones out of the club.

PsychoXR-20 · 2011-07-12, 10:49 PM

I had a idea for a mission system for PS1 so I am psyched to hear that there is going to be one for PS2.

I'm hoping that they won't all revolve around the one or two biggest battles going on at the time, but work in a way to also try and start battles.

Tool · 2011-07-12, 11:19 PM

I'm happy to see missions as well. I'm hoping they accomplish at least two key things. First being tangeable rewards for all mission types to encurage their use. Second that they're setup in a way to allow various combat elements to post missions as a form of request. Infantry requesting transportation, armor requesting air support, etc.

p0intman · 2011-07-12, 11:26 PM

I'm jaded on most command ideas. Especially after tonight. We really need a way to out the bad leaders so they dont destroy the fights for others. I could name names here, but anyone familiar with NC CR5 chat will know who im talking about. It has potential. I want a way to lock continents off for people, so that we can properly direct the zerg in a more organised fashion.

lock continents off for a period of time if objectives aren't achieved after so long a period of time. force people to fight elsewhere so things become more diverse.

i dont want to spend my entire goddamn week on fucking hossin because some fucking mentally retarded asshole thought it would be funny to go and open it when people wanted to go elsewhere.

**Malorn** · 2011-07-12, 11:49 PM

Missions have immense potential.

1) Auto-generated missions (from the "high command") are a way for the PS devs to shape battles and encourage interesting behavior and shape battles.

2) Missions give new players and solo players clear direction. Helps solve the whole "ok what do I do? where do I go?" problem. This is really good for retaining new players and getting them to the action and enjoying the game.

3) It gives a means to do real command by commanders for their outfits, squads and the empire as a whole. Its true "command rank" without needing globals or other announcements.

Its one half of command re-design to eliminate the need for a CR5 or the whole former CR system (the other half is the ability to create social groups of outfits for communicaiton & coordination).

Tons of potential with the mission system and I'm really happy to see it in the game. The question is are they going to make it worthwhile enough for people to complete the missions, worthwhile enough for commanders to create *good* missions, and easy enough to use for people to navigate to them.

I hope at a bare minimum players get a waypoint and instruction on getting to their mission objective. I'd like to see a searchable mission database and a means of signing-up for missions, along with the ability to see how many (but not who) has signed up for a given mission. You don't want to reveal who is doing them due to security/alts/spies. narrow rope to walk here but you do have to be careful about what all information about missions is conveyed.

Valdae · 2011-07-12, 11:50 PM

The way I see it, if an outfit is given the mission "Capture base A within 30 minutes", I would hope a rival outfit from the defending empire would get "defend base A for the next 30 minutes". This would be a cool feature if there was a high enough xp reward for encouraging players into taking up the mission.

**Malorn** · 2011-07-12, 11:57 PM

For automated missions it could end up working that way naturally. The "attack this territory" mission pops up. So players from empire A go over to it. Shortly after attacking the loss of the territory generates a mission to go reclaim it. At that point both empires end up getting directed to the same territory naturally.

But that depends on how many auto-generated missions are available. I hope they aren't matched exactly 1 for 1 so things stay interesting, but reacting to a lost territory by giving a mission to reclaim it seems reasonable and would flow well.

Sifer2 · 2011-07-13, 12:49 AM

I think it sounds good. For combat on this scale you need ways to coordinate folks. An a lot of people wont listen to text or even voice chat. But they have been trained like dogs to follow mission objective icons by years of playing various games lol.

Of course the key here is who gets to decide what the missions will be. There better be a good system in place of determining who the high ranking officers are.

razor851 · 2011-07-13, 01:04 AM

Missions could be extremely awesome or extremely terrible. They'll probably be the latter but we'll just have to wait and see!

krnasaur · 2011-07-13, 01:10 AM

As long as there isn't a way for the system to be abused by people trying to harm the empire (like 75% of NC CR5s do now) im all for it

Lonehunter · 2011-07-13, 01:13 AM

I think it has great potential. But I just hope it doesn't create any problems, or counterproductive. The only example I can think of right now is a mission like "Destroy 10 Generators in 30 minutes" That may be extreme, but you get my point.

I'm really interested in the Outfit/Squad missions. Is it something I can create on the fly? I would be nice to have a set objective in my squad's HUD.

Lunarchild · 2011-07-13, 05:43 AM

Overall missions sound good... I have a lot of questions, like:

Up to how much detail can commanders set up missions? How about mission trees / conditional missions? Can you prepare a bunch of missions in advance? How are they going to prevent abuse of the system?

Mostly very practical things I guess

Dreamcast · 2011-07-13, 05:52 AM

I don't know.....I don't really get it to be honest.

I mean is it going to be a guide, like with waypoints discussing what you should do basically....or is it going to be a mission, where you completed you get a congratulations and get resources or xp?