For many of us, the mission terminal is central to our AO experiance. If you like to solo, and you dont want to spend hours finding a hunting spot thats not as crowded as the LA freeway at rush hour, then just run over to a handy mission term and get a mission. Sounds like a solo artist's dream, right? WRONG! Theres some problems with the mission system, and it's got nothing to do with insane pathing or mobs with x-ray vision.

The first problem that comes to mind is that, after 60 or so, its very difficult to get a mission thats not way out in the middle of BFE Clondike or somesuch. This is fine, assuming you have an hour to run out to your mission spot, dodging mobs (and perhaps angry PC's) the whole way. Not to mention that said mission is usually a cave, which makes it a wasted trip for pet classes. Unacceptable.

This brings up my second point. Caves suck. If you play any pet class, caves are simply undoable. Ok, ok, 13.6 is supposed to fix that. I'll belive it when I see it.

Here's an idea that would not be hard to implement. Add 2 more sliders to the mission term. The first is Near/Far, the second is Urban/Wilderness. Near/Far is easy, this will produce missions closer or farther away from the term itself. Only got an hour before work to play? Set the slider full Near, and get a mission right there in town. On all night? By all means, drag that sucker all the way to the right and go exploring. Like a particular zone? Experement with the slider untill you get jobs just where you want em. Dont care either way? Leave the slider at it's default setting, and play the cards as dealt. Also (and fairly obviously), closer missions pay less then further ones, so game balance is not affected.

Urban/Wilderness. Always fighting in office complexes can get dull. And some of the cave tiles are awfully impressive, eyecandy-wise. Changing this slider will alter the tileset of the mission in question. One could go as far as a simple on/off setup, but Im thinking that some random element would be better (assuming that cave pathing is indeed gonna get fixed). Might not even need this particular slider if Near/Far is used, as getting missions in, say, Borealis pretty much assures you of an urban setting, while grabbing a Clondike job is likely gonna be armed spelunking.

I belive that implementing these changes to the mission term will not only add a good bit of customer satisfaction, but go a long way towards backing up Funcom's claim that AO is soloable all the way to the top.

Lets see some feedback on this, folks.

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Redtaype
64th Solitus Beauracrat
OmniTek, RK2

OmniTek and lovin' it!
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