Ready for testing: Missions Phase 1

Missions Phase 1

Missions Phase 1 isenabled on PTS and is ready for your rigorous testing and feedback! This system is going to be rolled out in several phases. This phase of the mission system is foundational, meaning it isn't full featured yet, but future phases will add all of the bells and whistles you might expect from a grand mission system. The main benefit in this first phase is better guidance on where to go and what to do without having to look at a map or divine how the lattice system works. In future phases we will expand upon this system to include rewards, new mission types, more squad features, and player-created missions. Here are the main features of this release so you know what to expect out of it and identify bugs.


Auto-generated missions for attacking and defending territories.

• There are no player generated missions at this time.
• Missions do not have rewards associated with them at this time.
• Missions that are created follow lattice and capture rules – you will only get attack missions for places you can actually attack, and you will only get defend missions for places with significant enemy presence or are actively being captured.

Missions are assigned automatically based on proximity.

• You will get the nearest mission to your present region.
• If you don’t like the current mission or want to go fight somewhere else, just go to the location you want and your mission will update to the most appropriate mission for that area.
• If in a vehicle, mission assignment will be delayed whenever you change regions. This is to prevent mission spam while in fast moving vehicles, such as aircraft.
• If you are in a vehicle and remain in a region for up to 20 seconds your mission may update if there is a more applicable region to your current location.
• Leaving a vehicle, spawning, and joining or leaving a squad will also cause assignment re-evaluation.

Defend missions do not necessarily start or end immediately when a facility becomes contested.

• They will start when significant enemy presence enters the facility or when the points become contested.
• They will end when the capture progress is fully restored by the defenders and the enemy presence at the facility has been reduced to insignificant levels.
• This means that defend missions correspond more with enemy activity at a facility than just the capture points being flipped.

Mission UI changes

• Missions have a waypoint and a map indicator.
• The mission waypoint and map indicator disappear when you enter the area around a facility. This is intentional so as not to obstruct combat in the region. If you leave the area of the facility the waypoint will return.
• You will get a notification when missions change, and the mission waypoint will update.
• A new mission panel is above the mini-map and indicates your current mission and distance to it. This panel will update to include capture status whenever you are in the area of a facility for which you have a mission.

Squads and Missions

• If you are in a squad, your mission will always be the same as your Squad Leader’s mission. Our intent is to promote unity and cohesion with the squad by ensuring all squad members have the same objective area.
• Squad leader missions update the same as described above – proximity to the squad leader. The squad leader does not need to do anything special to have this behavior.

Neat

Awesome...but we can turn this automated mission system off if we like, right? It seems like a sort of distracting thing if I want to go off and do my own personal player mission.

cooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooool

why

Phase 1 patience young one.

I was hoping to see liberator stuff instead. :L Now this mission system will take up all the time.

but i want to use Phase 2 patience!!!

Had quite a lot of discussion about whether some of the UI could be toggled off. We decided that we wanted it to be not annoying enough for that to be necessary. See how it feels first and give us your feedback. A big part of this foundational part of missions is getting the UI and behavior right such that it does the right thing and doesn't feel too imposing but still provides good direction.

Looking forward to having a look when it goes up. I'll try to get some outfit folks to check it out with me in the next couple days.

Could we get some indicator this is happening?

Well it seems that they already have most of Phase 1 done already. Maybe some Liberator weapons in a week or so.

I'm of the opinion that there is currently far too much UI clutter already, and have been asking for more transparency options to relieve that. Why not give plays the option oseeing these missions on their HUD? If people have no desire to do these its just wasted ui space and added distraction. I know, personally, it will be so for myself and my outfit.

Be forward thinking on these sort of qol issues.

Are automated missions going to be a thing, or will squad missions be primarily how these happen?

To be honest, I thought this was primarily going to be a tool for squad leads? Is it instead going to be something to push new players down lane sans needing to join a squad? I am not meaning that to sound as blunt or rude as it is coming out, I am genuinely curious. I see how it could fill both roles, but will there be the incentive to accept squad missions over automated ones? Otherwise I am concerned it could deincentivize people from joining squads or platoons... something that is already apparently a problem, by my understanding of prior comments made by SOE.

ok we all have played the lattice system so here's a interesting bit. If your current mission is capture x territory and you have currently not caped the point yet and a enemy caps the point behind you the mission switches correct.
I am asking this because some current tactical strategies rely on players being focused on the point in front of them. while a group or individual on the defenders side goes around flanks and caps the attackers point. Sometimes due to inattention they loose the base and although it does not happen often it does happen.
Depending on how the mission system works it would make this kind of tactic nearly unusable. I don't know if that is what you want or not but depending on how you are notified of mission changes this would nullify/greatly reduce this tactics effectiveness.
Thank you for your time

So an automatic "mission" system that points to the closest attackable base or the closest defendable base with enemies with no reward and no requirement to actually finish the mission, just go where you want and it'll give you a new mission...isn't that basically just a waypoint to the nearest base then? What's that supposed to achieve?

That part seems rather obvious, it's a way to push people down lane. So: Go here and you get certs. Way to guide newer people.

Eh, the liberator update is fluff compared to this. This has the potential to direct a lot of newbies and random casual players. Even add a bit to the game compared to it.

Seems like a mission/directive system hybrid which is fine. Will be great down the line when players can hit a key and bring up mission list and zoom off to join it. But first things first I suppose.

Tying the mission to the squad lead might bum some people out of additional capture points or whatever the reward will be if the squad lead decides to go somewhere else to e.g. repair an ESF at a safe base, which might take longer than 20 seconds. What if they're shot down and need to redeploy along a separate lattice line?

You also want to watch out for groups of galaxies flying over territory and activating defend missions when they're going to attack a separate base.

Will missions take WDS score into account as well at some point?

Definitely a step in the right direction though, hopefully this will cut down on disorganised squads full of people all at different bases.