My vision of Story Missions
Just my musings here. I got into AO because of the promise that the storyline offered. I thought the mission system was an incredible innovation to the MMORPG universe and especially liked that it gave casual players like me a way to always get something to do quickly. When the Player Interaction and the Story posts went up I was overjoyed to see that there would be missions that would allow a player to directly involve themselves in the storyline. It has recently been revealed that those story missions are actually just the kind of quests that you can get in any MMORPG on the market today, a very old and stale idea requiring such joys as out-of-game mining of data on websites, camping and 'unique' drops that everybody will eventually have.
What I had envisioned was an incorporation of the current system with a storyline. In other words, a character could complete a mission that would actually have in-game effects. For instance, maybe I'm sent out to rescue a scientist being held by the other side (or by the Manteze or whoever). If I succeed, then perhaps something becomes a little easier to get on our side (more of or cheaper X in shopping terminals). Maybe I have to assassinate someone that makes it more difficult for the other side to get something. Maybe I'm assigned to steal something from the other side's lab that is actually new and experimental (i.e. NOT a Paper Hammer!) and this brings my side closer to developing some breakthrough than the other side. Maybe people on both sides are doing missions related to this breakthrough and each time someone succeeds, the lever on their scale moves toward their side. Once their side has ten more successes than the other side, they get the technology?
I know these all sound like minor rewards, but this way a player can actually say "because of my efforts, my allies/enemies can/cannot now do/get/have X". They are making a difference, they are not a superhero whipping the other side all by themselves, but they are making a difference. That can make SO much difference to the quality of a role-playing experience.
Let me get really pie in the sky here. An Omni engineer gets a mission to try and recover a rare notum alloy that is in a particularly monster-laden cave complex. He goes and succeeds on his mission, returning with the alloy. He then must use his tradeskills to manipulate the alloy in some way before giving it to the machine. Next an NT gets a mission where he has to take the alloy and use a special machine found only in an area guarded by a neutral faction, the machine can only be operated by someone with at least X skill in NP. Then a crat must get the paperwork necessary to have a specially prepared receptacle for the resulting unstable mixture made (a man can dream). Finally an agent or fixer has to get the corrupted notum into Tir and use it on the Tir grid entrance where it will mess that entrance up to such a degree that the grid exit requirement increases by X.
Then it is time to try and undo it. There is someone that knows who and how it was done but Omni was smart enough to take him to a difficult to access outpost. So first a clan adventurer must get there, find the guy in the outpost (i.e. mission area) and, instead of killing or clicking on him, say "Tell me how to undo this before I hack you into very thin slices". He then gets an instruction list and returns it to the booth. Then the various professions have to start fulfilling the different steps, one of which might even involve one of the Omni characters somehow.
And friends could even help cooperate. Maybe after that Adventurer returns the list, the guy says, "And if you happen to know a Martial Artist with about your experience then send him my way, it looks like we'll need him" and he alerts his guildmate about the opportunity. And maybe there is a classified list somewhere where you can find out who has a mission (really, is someone going to keep it a secret that they need something done or advertise for a level 35-40 Fixer who wants to do something for their side?).
I've rambled enough, I think you get the drift. Would this be difficult, of course. Would it be impossible, I don't think so. Would it hook players and bring in new ones like nothing that has hit the MMORPG world in a long time? I think so.
Scorus
