Ready for testing: Missions Phase 1

speaking of UI options, do you have any information on whether or not UI skins will be part of player studio?

I'm a bit worried the automatic mission changes might be disruptive due to vehicles maneuvering at long ranges and things like squad leaders or solo players deploying to more distant bases to spawn tanks or aircraft. Maybe it would be better to offer the new mission with a keypress to accept it (a bit like the "press INS to deploy on your squad leader" thing) instead of automatically changing it? "A closer mission [brief description] is available. Press X to switch to this mission."

But doesn't this make the capturing for the enemy harder? For example you could wait a minute as hidden enemy, so that all those restless players leave the base instead of going on to defend it. And when the air is clear again you could try a new capture. But when the system tells them to stay, because it knows that you are still there.... well...
Or will it be connected to the actually seen amount of enemies?

I hope there is also an delay. Because I don't want the mission to change while I am repairing my vehicle.

Squad Leader generated missions sound like a great idea. Giving squad members an incentive to follow orders will make a huge difference to the effectiveness of random pick up squads and encourage people to be part of a squad.

These randomly generated missions however seem to provide little benefit other than funnelling newbies to the next fight but do seem to add a number of potential problems:

No incentive to join a squad
Being in a squad with a leader only using the auto generated missions will lead to random mission changes as the leader goes to get / repair a vehicle at a different base
An increase in the amount of zerging with even less scope or benefit to more tactical squad based play

I'm sure there are more but I've only just woke up and my brain isn't fully functional yet. I see where you are heading with this and I think overall it is a fantastic idea as long as it is implimented properly. The problem is I've a horrible feeling that any inclusion of an automatic mission system is a terrible mistake.

Not sure why people have to have their hands held while playing this game but judging by the sub par game flow we see on a regular basis, something to address it would be OK (if you want to know what im referring to, ask). How this game plays, or rather should play is obvious to me but clearly not to everyone. I'd rather see the battle flow mostly in the hands of the players only but having played PlanetSide and now PS2, it seems to not be the best choice.

My initial thoughts however are regarding defense missions.

If you bung a defense mission on a base thats pretty much done for, you should not encourage people to just spawn in and ultimately get spawn camped. Yes the rewards come for resecuring and beating back the attacker, however, instead try to encourage them to counter attack the enemy from outside the base. Such as, marking advisable courses of action for the mission? Deploy to this facility/large outpost and counter attack this target.

People need to be educated in what is a good defense. A good defense is a strong offense. Sitting in the spawn room getting swamped doesnt cut the mustard.

I do look forward to seeing where this system goes. (if it were me i'd develop other things though!)

Can I suggest a mission locking system please,

Pilots have to pop in and out of combat zones and it would suck if, further down the line when the rewards show up, pilots were getting short changed because they had to go rearm/repair at the moment the base flipped, despite them having been providing close air for the entire fight.

I don't mean, you lock the mission you get reward even if you've left ages ago, I mean you have a say 2 minute grace period whilst the missions locked whereby you can leave up to a certain distance and the mission wont change and will be immediately active once you re-enter the bases zone.

It would also mitigate the squad leader issue others have highlighted, so the mission is locked in and wont change just because the squad leaders fallen back to get a Sundy or repair their aircraft.

Something along these lines anyway

I would really like to see this system tied more into a command structure than automation. Automated objectives don't get into the details of things - sometimes attacking the nearest base is the wrong move, or sometimes you may have to give up one battle in order to prevail in another.

If this is groundwork for the system as a whole that is fine. If this is what the base level system is going to be then I will be disappointed. More flow and direction should come from the players and not be spoon-fed to your UI.

Agreed with Solaries. I already can't stand how every vehicle has to have an icon over it (which shows up when inside buildings), along with every nearby base as well. I'm running around inside a building trying concentrate and all of these annoying icons keep zipping around me screen. I really don't need yet another icon or waypoint taking up real estate on my monitor and distracting me from what I'm trying to do.

That said, I think the mission system is a good idea. I might not mind seeing the mission marker or whatever you will use for it if the screen were less cluttered, but the current state of the HUD makes me not want it. Please consider giving players the option of removing certain HUD elements that they find distracting. This doesn't mean the mission system has to be toggled off, it just means that I do not want to receive information that I do not need. If I'm at Crossroads Watchtower and the mission changes to "go to The Crown", I don't need a waypoint since I know where that base is.

I don't get why this is a thing. So you have a system that can apparently identify when a significant enemy presence has left a base, why not just make the mission system call it good when the enemy leaves instead of making people stick around for the bar to fill back up all the way? Right now one of the worst things about this game is that the base capture system encourages people to loiter around at empty bases, and this wouldn't really help the problem or change things at all.

IMO replacing base cap XP with an intelligent mission system that knows when a fight is over and rewards you appropriately would be ideal.

Would it be possible for you guys to cull friend/foe chevrons if they're between each other? Seeing an enemy with a blue dorito of the friendly right behind him gets super old fast.

I would use a notification that states a new mission is available, press "X" to view/accept, or something similar rather than have it just change every 20 seconds.

Yeah, because that's totally necessary, I mean when a base is captured on live just now everyone just disperses into the hills in random directions...they definitely don't just all drive down the obvious road to the next base. What the game really need is automatic indicators to show the zerg where to zerg.

Tbh, I'm fine with automated indicators... I just want to know why someone would want to join squads, after we get them. That needs to be balanced out or you'll have no one considering squads anymore.

Wooohoooo!!!

Player generated missions are a future phase.

Auto first, then rewards, then player generated.

I asked this on Twitter:
Will the auto missions have rewards greater or lesser than squad missions?
and received this reponse from Malorn:
presently equal, but we plan on additional bonuses for squad missions

Link

I'm also looking into the possibility of XP bonuses for squad members in the squad mission area for phase 1, no promises on whether it will make it.

If that's possible, would an exp bonus for squad leaders whenever a squad member collects their bonus exp be a good idea? It'd encourage people to make squads, and actually LEAD them and keep them together - instead of just not giving a damn as people spread out and stop being useful.

Not much, but a token amount like a Sunderer spawn maybe?

Any word on improved command tools coming along with the Mission System? Or ever?

Longer-term goal of missions.

This is all phase 2 or beyond, but I want to give you an idea of where we want to go with it.

The idea of squad mission rewards is that of an XP boost tied to squad members being in the mission area. The idea is also that the bonus would scale up with larger squads, and require that members be in the mission area to activate the bonus. So bigger squad = more XP, but they have to stick together.

The bonus a squad leader gets is that they get the same as the rest of the squad - but the automated mission is always based on the squad leader's proximity. This means the squad leader will most likely be getting more uptime with the bonus compared to other members, since it is always the closest mission to the squad leader. Net effect is the SL gets more out of it and that's their perk for being the guy making the decisions.

Another goal is to make it such that even selfish greedy players are doing right by their squad. Players are going to be greedy, so we want to leverage it. The idea is that the optimal path is getting many players and encouraging them to stick together and go to places where the killing and xp is good (e.g. an actual fight). Everybody wins.

Again, Phase 2+. Plenty of time to give feedback on it when more specifics are known.