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Mission: Trick or Treat
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This mission could have easily been very good. It's about a dispute between two trade businesses. One thinks the other is steeling the other's cargo, and both are hiring guards to protect and fight each other, which is cutting into the bottom line. You're called on to negotiate a peace.
At that point the scenario falls apart. All you do is, literally, run from one side to the other, going back and forth reading what these two guys say. You don't actually do any negotiation. Then comes a point where investigation would make sense, since one of them offers to allow you to check their records, then the other says to check that guy's cargo. So, predictably, instead of using your brain, you hit F on some boxes and the mission is quickly over.
Very disappointing, more so because the story is almost a story, but isn't strong enough on its own to support the time taken.
At that point the scenario falls apart. All you do is, literally, run from one side to the other, going back and forth reading what these two guys say. You don't actually do any negotiation. Then comes a point where investigation would make sense, since one of them offers to allow you to check their records, then the other says to check that guy's cargo. So, predictably, instead of using your brain, you hit F on some boxes and the mission is quickly over.
Very disappointing, more so because the story is almost a story, but isn't strong enough on its own to support the time taken.
Post edited by Unknown User on
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The first brother knows his ships have been going missing, but not who has been making them go missing. One part of the mission should be to track down and investigate the ships. I know, I hate those missions too in this game. That's why, the mission should have it so the first brother had sent out one of his own ships with no cargo, in order to track and scan his ship's remains. His results should be that low quality Breen weapons were used, the kind any cheap mercenary might use. He takes that to mean his brother's mercenaries men are responsible, because his brother is a tightwad, but he never checked the second brother's mercenary's weapons.
The most obvious general suggestion is to have multiple questions for each statement. However, unlike other games, where you can go back and say something different to the same question over and over, you get only one chance for each stage of negotiation. Each suggestion, question, and proposal would push the situation into another level, where the brothers become more likely to either come to terms, or fight, still with room to mess up dramatically. That covers the negotiations that were missing.
Another idea is to have actual records with clues as to what is going on. That way, when the other brother suggests looking at his records, you can actually do it, and cross reference it with the attacks on the first brother. The situation really needs parts where you, the player, can ask the characters, can you prove this, and let you and them figure it our, rather than them giving you everything with no though. However, considering how obvious the situation becomes in the very end, you don't even need to cross reference anything, so the story itself could use some work.
The second brother bought his stolen supplies directly from Nausicans. What is bad about this is the second brother is the one who suggests it was Nausicans who stole the first brother's supplies rather than himself. At that point, it should have immediately occurred to him that what he bought might have been stolen from his brother. Because of that, I think that angle of the story needs to be removed, or modified. There is actually a Ferengi who asks you for help in the negotiation, so if it turned out he was the one who bought stolen merchandise and never told the second brother, that would offer an interesting twist while avoiding the stupidly obvious connection that should have been made.
Back to the first suggestion; if you get into a fight, it should probably involve both parties fighting each other on the ground, and you beaming back up. Once on the ship, you leave, but then receive a message that Nausicans are attacking both businesses. You head back, help the cargo ships fight off the Nausicans, then stun everyone on the surface, beam up the Nausican's weapons, and beam down to demand their surrender. The Nausicans fight anyway, unarmed, and they go down easy, but there are lots of them, so it's still tough even with the brothers' help.
Over all there should be several ways to solve the situation: you can use pure negotiation using rhetoric based on their brotherly bonds, or investigation, or fighting, or combinations of any of them. There might be several paths within those options as well. For instance, you find inconsistencies in the timing of the attacks and hiring of mercenaries by the second brother, or you find out who certain goods were bought from, and expose the dishonest worker. Or, you just scan the second brother's goods, which match the first brother's missing goods, which leads to a fight, unless you combine it with scans of the second brother's ship's weapons, which show he couldn't have attacked the first brother's ships.
I agree with all of the OP's points, and I firmly believe this mission, in particular, squandered the opportunity to make this MMO distinctly Star Trek in tone. Perhaps something as basic as a level-able Diplomacy skill for your Captain could solve this? A couple of extra dialogue trees for the NPC's based on your Diplomacy success or failure, and suddenly you feel like you've made more of a difference.
let me talk to the people, ask some question, let me look through crates, ro check computer logs etc, atleast let me feel like im doing something, but every step of the way your BO is telling you what to do, and its like STFU im the captain and i know what im doing if i want your advice ill ask for it!.
All of the dialog could always be open at all times, however, only some of the dialog options are shown to the player. The text bar lets you access those hidden options, if you can think of them on your own. Finally, the diplomacy skill is for making the dialog easier by automatically revealing greater and greater numbers of the hidden options. For instance, when you start you may have only three dialog options at any given time. Put one point into diplomacy and you reveal a fourth dialog option.
Perhaps further diplomacy points could do more, or something other, than reveal dialog options, perhaps they could highlight important words as clues. That way, diplomacy would feed into critical reading and still leaves things up to you and the text bar. I think a combination of the two, dialog reveal, and clue highlight may be best. It could even be two skills, depending on what you prefer. You could have Diplomacy, or Deduction. That fits since Deduction treats the dialog as a puzzle that has to be worked out.
Deduction would be clue highlighting, while diplomacy is dialog revealing. For this to work, I think deduction would have to connect to another set of mechanics, so it's dual purpose. The reason is that Deduction doesn't make dialog as easy as Diplomacy, so something needs to balance that. If it gave ease to puzzle solving, that could be the answer.
I missed you proposal of highlighting optimal options, that's a really good mechanic for Diplomacy, too. I think it's the most likely version to be used, if any of this is used. But, I prefer the ones where in the end the decision is still up to you.