Number of Missions COH Had at Launch?

[Eulb]

A suggestion for missions if the DEV's could do this ... when a hero talks to a NPC ( any or certain ones walking around the city ) a random generator could give you a mission... kind of like the radio mission but using the city immersion to get missions. Plus giving a player a better since/ feel that the hero is helping the city.

[broxen]

How many missions at launch? My guess, roughly 450. Here's why I say that...

So I'm actually in the middle of going through all the story dialog files from the CoH Issue 0 client. These were probably left in by accident and eventually disappeared client-side, but this early version of the client has them buried in the misc.pigg as .MS files.

These MS files are basic key-value pair lists of dialog lines. They are grouped by contact and somewhat abstract in relation to each other, but provide us with some insight into the storyarc system. They also may help answer this question.

There are 104 task or taskset files in misc.pigg under contacts. Some of these, such as the file for Officer Flint (from the tutorial mission) contain dialog for multiple related tasks from that contact. The MS files are in task subfolders grouped by levels 1-7, and accompanied by NPC files that contain dialog related to each contact. The levels appear to be abstractions, as the level 7 folder contains Ginger Yates a 35-40lvl contact in Founders Falls.

Since I'm not finished parsing these files, I can't say precisely how many missions there are, but I can pose an educated guess.

We have 104 storyarcs of various length, many of which have multiple missions--off hand, 3-4 per arc. The later arcs seem to have more missions, maybe 4-5. Considering all of this, I'd ballpark it at between 400-500 total at launch. This doesn't really seem like that many, when you have contacts for each origin type, and various mob groups with specific storyarcs.

That all said, I may be conflating some simple tasks with full missions, which may lower that number. But just looking at the files, the distinction gets a bit subjective at times.

[Consultant]

Broxen,

That is really cool! Please keep at it and share any other conclusions that you draw. For example, if can you tell if the total number of mission givers from the tutorial to level 40 was 104, can you relate the numbers to the levels? That is 20 contacts for missions designed for level 1-10 characters, etc?

I wonder if there is a list, or if you could produce one, of the contact names? Ginger Yates...I remember her.

Consultant

[Parkhyeyeon]

This might help finding a good guess at how many missions there were.
http://cityofheroes.wikia.com/wiki/Cate ... s_By_Level

Just a quick look through... Starting as a Magic origin in Atlas Park
Azuria - 6 missions(level 1-4)

• Laurance Mansfield - 8 missions(level 5-9)
  Genevieve Sanders - 6
  Paco Sanchez - 6
  • Linda Summer - 7(level 5-9)
    Juan Jimenez - 6
    Detective Jose Brogan - 5
    Paula Dempsey - 4
    Maurice Feldon - 5
    Ron Hughes - 5
    Samuel Pierce - 5
    Tony Kord - 5

Some contacts had some overlap of missions and you wouldn't necessarily get every contact. But that is the list you'd likely get up to level 10.

[GladDog]

You are correct! At release they had contact missions, NPC's with an icon over their head that gave out about a half dozen randomly generated missions before they quit giving them out. They removed them when radio missions were introduced.

[JestersGhost]

I think that a high priority should be put on a procedural mission generator like the newspaper/police scanner missions from CoH, so that we can have fast action right out of the gate, while simultaneously giving you time to properly craft *good* story missions (please no more "Your Statesman is in another castle." Ugh.) I am totally on-board with defined missions that tell a story, but I think a lot of the appeal of being a superhero is mindlessly whomping a bunch of ne'erdowells without the need for a lot of exposition.

I think that is a really good point. Even a basic mission generator - pick enemy group, door, and type (objective or defeat enemy), and boom. It would be good for filling a hole at first while the full story missions are built up and provides a bit of breathing room to do them properly. Sure they'll be really basic, but to be honest that's fine, at least to start.

[broxen]

I wonder if there is a list, or if you could produce one, of the contact names? Ginger Yates...I remember her.

The Red Tomax site has a list of all contacts. As does ParagonWiki
http://tomax.cohtitan.com/contacts/coh.php

[Jasix]

428 is how many missions CoH had at launch.

[Consultant]

Does 428 include Newspaper Missions? Or is that just from NPC contacts.

And that is, I think for levels 1-40.

[GladDog]

I counted 319, but some of those missions were probably added during later issues. It looks like it may have been 428 after they raised the level cap to 50 for issue 1.

My original estimate of 175 looks low, so probably 275-300 missions at release for a level cap of 40. These don't include store contacts, TF contacts or guidance contacts (the ones that guide you to your next mission contact, like the lady at the entrance to Atlas Park town hall).

[Eulb]

SO what is the number of missions at launch will SOH have ??? i do keep in mind that this MMOrpg will grow and does not have to be perfect at launch...

[GladDog]

It depends.

If they release with a level cap of 20, and it takes a hundred hours doing missions to cap, then;

There needs to be 100 hours of missions. With talking to NPCs, traveling and stops at vendors, that probably works out to 100 missions.

If they release with two TFs, each of those will need about 10 missions.

If they have 4 day jobs, each one will need a 3-5 mission story arc and a followup arc, lets say 7 missions total for each of the four. so, 28 missions.

That adds up to 148 missions, plus they plan to have something similar to police radio missions. If the level cap is higher, the number of missions will need to go up accordingly. For a cap of 25, 200 missions (assuming 125 hours to cap and also including extra day job arcs and an extra TF) seems about right.

They could trim that number down with events, GMs and world bosses, but I am pretty sure none of those are projected for release.

These are just estimates, since the only way to have hard conclusions is with hard facts. And, we won't be seeing anything like that until the game goes through some level of alpha and beta testing.

[Consultant]

GladDog is in the ballpark, but we really don't know yet. We're figuring it out; hence all of the questions.

[SwitchFade]

Here's a question for the community. I read somewhere that COH had 6,000 actual missions when the game closed. That figure does not include the AE or any street sweeping activity.

But how many defined missions (go to the door, go inside, do heroic stuff, or "defeat ten Skulls") did COH have on launch day?

And now, 15 years later, how many defined missions should we strive for on launch day?

Because I love, more than anything, the feel and flow of CoH, missions at launch could be small-ish. I loved running FrostFire over and over to get it down perfect at low level, and enjoyed helping out lowbies on missions I had already done. The actual USE of my toons mattered more than so many different missions.

I whole heatedly admit to having alt-itis, and spent a ton of time in the level 6-32 range, I like playing my toons as it was fun to try out and respec.

[A1fighter]

If the missions scale with your level it is no problem. What I am referring to is exp. for example, if there are 30 missions and a level 30 level cap, the 30 missions should take you to level 30 IMO.