The Energon Pub

Posted: **Wed Feb 07, 2007 9:54 am**

Having newly arrived at level 2, I've found myself sadly disappointed by the writing quality of some of the missions. Am I the only one who thinks this?

I don't want to see like an ass, but something along the lines of 'This is Cybershark, our Autobot trading routes have been under attack, etc' is far better thought-out and believable than the relatively thin 'This is Prowl, we need you to stop Shockwave's experiment from getting loose... again!'

I mean- don't they go through some sort of screening test for punctuation and length, as well as suitability? Just a thought- this is a war, after all, and it'd be nice to have some proper official sounding missions.

Just irks me that we could have something better in the place of what we have now- it's not as if people haven't posted hundreds of ideas beforehand. Question is, why do some of the shorter, less logical ones get marks over intelligently written, sensical ones?

Just a random thought- don't mean to step on anyone's toes.

Posted: **Wed Feb 07, 2007 10:47 am**

I plead guilty to the "This is Cybershark" text, though I was using previous missions as a model when I wrote it.

They do go through some spelling and grammer screening, either through a Word processor (which isn't perfect) and/or the man who institutes such texts, namely Glyph, who is only human. Mistakes are often made.

As for their brevity, as I understand it, they're supposed to be mission briefs, stating the situation, the requirements, and the "goal" in a single paragraph. These are not supposed to be a long-winded conference minutes. I'm sure the breifness of them is to ensure that Glyph isn't spending hours on end trying to code a 400page document. I don't do a lot of RPGing beyong this game and Silkroad, but a lot of the quest explainations in Silkroad are just as breif as the missions here (I presume it's the same in any similar game). Gamers don't want to take hours just reading text when their playing; I doubt many read the texts that much anyway.

As for some of the missions, some take inspiration from the various Transformers cartoons and comics that have been released over the past 20+ years. Some of these far out situations come right out of those sources, so blame that. And some missions, like the tag teams, are just done for pure fun.

I'm writing from my own experiences on this subject. To be honest, the mission texts haven't really bothered me at all. Like I said before, I don't really pay attention to the text; just the levels, number of participants, and time remaining to join. I'm sure most long term players do the same.

Posted: **Wed Feb 07, 2007 11:11 am**

Thunderscream wrote:...I'm writing from my own experiences on this subject. To be honest, the mission texts haven't really bothered me at all. Like I said before, I don't really pay attention to the text; just the levels, number of participants, and time remaining to join. I'm sure most long term players do the same.

so do i

Posted: **Wed Feb 07, 2007 11:29 am**

Mission texts are like the jokes on the back of a Penguin wrapper; until some sort of backstory is implemented here, they are fun but ultimately meaningless.

We could be attacking a Smurf planet with gophers for all I care, the fact that I line up with up to 5 other Decepticons in order to beat on the Autobots doesnt really need a complicated mission spiel other than 'go there, kill them, return' until it all leads together for a reason or further goal.

...of course there has always been the option of 'specialist' missions using stat points as mission prerequisites, but it hasnt been used since I was level 0.
I put a couple in the old thread but they were never implemented.
Can anyone tell us if its worth trying to scribble out some more?

Posted: **Wed Feb 07, 2007 11:38 am**

I'm not complaining about the quality of the missions but I would like to see more variety. There are only 3 or 4 lvl 0 missions, and it seems like less for just level 1. This game is highly addictive, but I am kinda sick of capturing the nucleon. It would be great if the low level characters could be given missions not only from Shockwave etc.. but from the high level/ranking players of the game worked into the mission. I think this would give some continuity to this game.

Posted: **Wed Feb 07, 2007 11:46 am**

The truth of the matter is that the Mission Briefs are simply there for superficial value. Giving the minority of those that actually Role Play their characters a bit more of back story. The bottom line is that there really doesn't need to be anything other than Number of Combatants, Levels, and Mission time--but Glyph and the crew have decided to put a little bit more "flava" for the Missions.

I think that if you don't like the quality of the Mission text, then you have to take responsibility and read up on how to write Mission text (not too difficult) and then put your proverbial Energon where your mouth is. If you don't like the current Mission texts, then guess what? WOW us with your newly created Mission texts. It's the only logical thing to do.

Hopefully, I'm not coming across as rude or snyde, but I think that something Burn told me rings true--if we want to make the game better, we need to be part of the solution instead of simply complaining about the problems. And of course, that's a paraphrase, because those aren't Burn's words exactly.

Word.

Posted: **Wed Feb 07, 2007 12:06 pm**

TBH I never ever read the text unless its a tourny :wink:

Posted: **Wed Feb 07, 2007 12:16 pm**

Thunderscream wrote:I plead guilty to the "This is Cybershark" text, though I was using previous missions as a model when I wrote it.

You wrote the CYbershark trade route one? That rawked. It's the kind of thing I prefer. ^^

Posted: **Wed Feb 07, 2007 12:38 pm**

Well as someone who submited about a dozen mission briefs last time I can tell you there's only so much spin you can put on what boils down to 'Autobots, defend yourselves against the Decepticons' or 'Decepticons , attack the Autobots'. If the game was more involved to the point where your mission objective gave a result other than win or loose or if there was an alternative to the vs. mission structure then there would be more variety in the mission briefs but there isn't so there's not. Whataya gonna do?

Posted: **Wed Feb 07, 2007 12:47 pm**

Matrix. wrote:
Thunderscream wrote:I plead guilty to the "This is Cybershark" text, though I was using previous missions as a model when I wrote it.

You wrote the CYbershark trade route one? That rawked. It's the kind of thing I prefer. ^^

Thank you, I do try.

shockwaveuk wrote:Well as someone who submited about a dozen mission briefs last time I can tell you there's only so much spin you can put on what boils down to 'Autobots, defend yourselves against the Decepticons' or 'Decepticons , attack the Autobots'. If the game was more involved to the point where your mission objective gave a result other than win or loose or if there was an alternative to the vs. mission structure then there would be more variety in the mission briefs but there isn't so there's not. Whataya gonna do?

What he said.

Posted: **Wed Feb 07, 2007 1:06 pm**

Subsonika wrote:TBH I never ever read the text unless its a tourny

Thats right, its WHO'S in the mission thats more important eh Sub?

Posted: **Wed Feb 07, 2007 2:30 pm**

shockwaveuk wrote:Well as someone who submited about a dozen mission briefs last time I can tell you there's only so much spin you can put on what boils down to 'Autobots, defend yourselves against the Decepticons' or 'Decepticons , attack the Autobots'.

That's the thing- it's a war. There's HUNDREDS of scnearios you can make up that don't require further programing, just a way with words.

Posted: **Wed Feb 07, 2007 3:34 pm**

Matrix. wrote:
shockwaveuk wrote:Well as someone who submited about a dozen mission briefs last time I can tell you there's only so much spin you can put on what boils down to 'Autobots, defend yourselves against the Decepticons' or 'Decepticons , attack the Autobots'.

That's the thing- it's a war. There's HUNDREDS of scnearios you can make up that don't require further programing, just a way with words.

The floor is yours.

Posted: **Wed Feb 07, 2007 6:05 pm**

shockwaveuk wrote:
Matrix. wrote:
shockwaveuk wrote:Well as someone who submited about a dozen mission briefs last time I can tell you there's only so much spin you can put on what boils down to 'Autobots, defend yourselves against the Decepticons' or 'Decepticons , attack the Autobots'.

That's the thing- it's a war. There's HUNDREDS of scnearios you can make up that don't require further programing, just a way with words.

The floor is yours.

Exactly.

QS and SWUK have pretty much said it. We have a thread where people can submit mission texts. It's there for when Glyph (or a support staff member when such things are implemented) can go through and pull them out and use them.

Last rotation Glyph said he was fixing up grammar and punctuation, but at the same time there may be people submitting texts whose native language may not be english.

And I do have to agree with what QS said, they're really on there for superficial purposes. People probably don't pay much attention to them because they don't influence the game much and are updated once or twice a year.

Personally when I write up mission texts I try to go with a theme, the Go-Bots was mine, that covered a number of levels, along with the wrestling themed ones. Themes are good because as people progress through levels a new level of story is revealed for them.

Frankly i'd love for HMW to have it's own backstory with little to no involvement from canon characters. That'll make the mission texts even more original and worth reading, but i'm still waiting for that to happen ...

Posted: **Thu Feb 08, 2007 6:52 am**

Burn wrote:Frankly i'd love for HMW to have it's own backstory with little to no involvement from canon characters. That'll make the mission texts even more original and worth reading, but i'm still waiting for that to happen ...

Would I be right to assume you've petitioned Glyph with this idea, or at least the idea of having missions "introduced" by HMW characters instead of Hasbro/Takara created ones? Personally, I like the idea of some of the more well known HMW characters being used in the mission texts.

Posted: **Thu Feb 08, 2007 7:21 am**

Unfortunately, Kaiju, it's quite the opposite. HMW characters aren't allowed in mission texts. Stupid, I know, it makes more sense to supply back up to... say Phasewing than Optimus Prime, sense this is HMW, not G1.

...But in Glyph's defense, I know where he's coming from. If we had missions like this:

"Autobots, this is Stormmaster of the Mars Decepticons, I'm closing in on Goribus and the Covenent... Slag, the Destrons were waiting for us! We need support, someone get those Convoys off our backs so we can scrap that wraith and his biker femme and go home!"

"Goribus to Decepticon ambush force, that fool Stormmaster and his troops are right behind me... be ready to nail the coffin shut when we reach the target area..."

How many Autobots do you think would be upset because I got a mission based on my team while they didn't? Or Decepticons that would think that they should have been mentioned in the mission text instead of Gori or Sil? It's a matter of keeping the peace.

Posted: **Thu Feb 08, 2007 7:25 am**

one option to remedy that would be to have the names in the missions appear randomly from the bots/teams of that missions levels, rather like the motto thing.

Posted: **Thu Feb 08, 2007 7:29 am**

Hm... That would require an additional algorithm to read the faction of the team or character to insert, but it would work...

And as an added bonus, it would give a slight additional touch of variety to the missions... :-?

Posted: **Thu Feb 08, 2007 7:38 am**

Not a bad idea Tammy.

As the game itself can automatically detect whether you are a 'con or 'bot, then it shouldnt be hard for the mission texts to be able to fill in the blanks from the right faction/level.

:-?

Posted: **Thu Feb 08, 2007 7:38 am**

Turbomagnus, good point. I hadn't thought about that.

Random names could be interesting, but I think Glyph has enough things to work on already.

Posted: **Thu Feb 08, 2007 7:41 am**

Actually, knowing Glyph, he'll probably pop up in about six posts and comment about how he already had that planned and coded and was just waiting to finalize it and some other mission-related things so he could upload the new batches of code all at once. :-P

(Hey, I've been playing this game for three years, I have learned SOME things.

)

Posted: **Thu Feb 08, 2007 9:26 am**

Tammuz wrote:one option to remedy that would be to have the names in the missions appear randomly from the bots/teams of that missions levels, rather like the motto thing.

Hmm... interesting idea. I've been doing some work on a template/replacement system for mission briefs as it is - being able to type a placeholder field like #KILLED_AUTOBOTS# or #WON_ARMOR_TYPE# in the brief, for example, and have the game automatically replace the field with the appropriate text for that specific battle when displaying it - and that fits in quite well with the overall theme. The only thing would be that it would need the chosen character/team/player to be associated with the battle record, or the brief would display a different name to everyone who looked at it.

Posted: **Thu Feb 08, 2007 10:14 am**

You know we could make it a prize for being the one on your side and level range with the highest score/kills from a Tourney. It would slowly add Characters/Teams to Missions in an impartial way. Ooo, here's and idea ,probally hard to code, have characters mentioned by name get a bonus, of some sort, in the mission.

Posted: **Thu Feb 08, 2007 10:24 am**

I like the second part, it gives it an added feel for that TF being important in that mission...

As for the first part, I'll give my blunt, honest, and to-the-point first reaction. That reaction is this:
"Good GOD, people, why does everyone always want to make things tourney prizes? There ARE parts to HMW beyond tournaments...."

Posted: **Thu Feb 08, 2007 5:34 pm**

Rather than it being random, why not make it the first bot to join on each faction?

Obviously the "leader" of the mission is going to be the first to "report for duty".

The Energon Pub

Quality of the missions?

Quality of the missions?