Remote City Terminals

Would the game be much more enjoyable if Runners had an implant that let them bring up the City Terminal remotely?

Would help bring the game out of the 2000/2002 mindset and into the 2012+ mindset of having portable computers like ipads and cell phones.

The main reasoning behind this is just the cumbersome and tiring Mission system. If you could accept missions anywhere, the game's out of date mission system would be more tolerable.

I know the odds of this happening in Neocron are virtually zero, but perhaps food for Necron 3 thought...

"KKashShop is now selling the Portable CityComm! Only 160 KKpoints each!"
"Portable CityComms are single-use items. KK will not in any way compensate for loss or accidental activation, including loss due to server problems."

Sounds like a good idea!

Yeah, I was thinking the same about remote terminals the other day.

Even in the world today we have remote devices that can access all the data in the world so how come this doesn't exist anymore in the future.

The only thing that's a negative aboutit is maybe that the player can do the missions much faster if you don't need to walk to the term. On the other hand it's an artificial stretching of playtime so screw it.

Give us our neocron smartphone!!! Maybe it's an EyePhone :D

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ivan Eres

The only thing that's a negative aboutit is maybe that the player can do the missions much faster if you don't need to walk to the term. On the other hand it's an artificial stretching of playtime so screw it.

If Missions were to be accepted by a remote means, there would be changes to the missions of course.

Problem

Right now missions are used in only three ways for the most part. And only the first way really captures the essence of the 2001 mission model.

1) New players don't understand how the exp mechanics of the game works, so they actually use the missions as intended. They get a mission to kill bees/rats, do it, and repeat. I did it, and we all did it. Emphasize on "did"

New players get smart over time, and learn that missions only serve a single purpose - Faction Sympathy. And once they realize this, they either;

2) Do recycle / Research missions in their HQ for a few hours to cap Sympathy. You don't have to actually DO the missions, you just need to buy the item or clone a cube, and hand it in.

3) Run Aggy missions over and over and over for low level cash and sympathy.

Right now, missions are borked in so many ways. No one uses them to gain experience. Once you realize you can just shoot a rat for 50 experience in less that 10 seconds, what makes you think that same person is going to LEGITIMATELY Recycle parts he has to find from shooting the rat in the first place, just to get 50 experience? it's either kill mobs for constant EXP, or recycle parts that can take 30 minutes to find for 50 EXP.

The entire missions system needs an overhaul. It is a relic from the 2001 way of thinking about MMOs and is just cumbersome and rather useless for the point it was created for.

I mean, I took a very easy Currier mission and it required me to bring an item to TG HQ... and I was in my BD HQ! Obviously these weren't fixed from the DOY downgrade from years ago, but new players don't know that!

Solution

You pick a profession. You play the game. As you play, just like Shadowrun, you get a call in your head. Your johnson (or jones here) tells you "good, you are in such and such area. Kill X rats. You do so, mission done. And you get the call when you either enter an area, or trigger an event (like you killed 10 plants, now you need to do this or that). And it would be a little random. Maybe you get the mission only once every 5 minutes, so you can't exit and enter a sewer to trigger it over and over.

The missions you get are based on your profession. So a Scientist triggering an event would get something different than a Soldier.

A Scientist walks into Pepper Park 2. A random stranger calls you and says to meet him. You do, and he wants something researched.

A Soldier walks into Pepper Park 2. A random stranger calls you and says to meet him. You do, and he wants someone captures. You find the guy, you HAVE to use a shocker weapon or blunt object like a bat, and when you "kill" him, he is put into your inventory and you are weighed down till you bring the body to the stranger.

An Assassin walks into Pepper Park 2. A random stranger calls you and says to meet him. You do, and he wants someone dead. You find the guy, kill him, kill the guards surrounding him so you can run in and get his dog tags for proof he is dead.

Testing would have to be done, but Experience given for all missions would not be based on difficulty, but TIME SPENT. Missions of the same difficulty level would have to either be tweaked so they all take roughly the same time to complete, or give different rewards based on how long it takes.

Why? Let's be real. Players in MMOs care about their time spent playing more than anything. If you can kill rats for 20 minutes and gain 3k exp, or run a LEGIT recycle mission that takes 30 minutes, but gets you only 50 exp, I think it is obvious which one players will take for exp gain.