Feel free to shoot this down if you disagree, but I rather suspect there is a reason every other game I've played tries to create a personal feel in it's missions system. Whether it is some npc that you have to talk to in order to be assigned missions or annoying 'superior officer' giving you a run down of your task.

Now, I realize that VO is a sandbox rather than a restricted linear with off shooting branch game of follow the missions.

I do think that the feel of taking missions is something less than watching a bag of chips fall from the selected slot in a vending machine. Incorporating images of the key figures in the dialogue would go a long way towards improving the act of taking a mission.

Also restructuring the missions in such a way as to suggest progression- particularly in trade and possibly mining (I never really did many of those) I have the sense that there is some progression built in, but once you've reached a certain point, it's pretty much randomly generated. Larger and more profitable missions should be earned through effort rather than aborting until you get the one you want.

Edit1: Also, nationalist players in the military could get annoying messages from the game informing them that their nation is behind in Deneb or CTC and that their aid is needed when they log in.

I think personalization of this sort will add to the immersion as opposed to the current all text instruction box that does very little to engage the player.

Altough it's a cosmetic sugestion, I'd say that the game needs a face. NPC commanders/workers in stations should have at least a 2D picture.

The most important addition is voiceovers. Having to read a lot is not all that appealing to the modern gamer/auditory learner.

@TRS
If the voiceovers just reads all those big mission descriptions, then no.
If they just talk about something related to the mission, would be better. But would become annoying to hear the same speech everytime you take a similar mission. And everybody would just turn it off.

I said voiceovers not 'boring voiceovers'

"having to read a lot is not at all that appealing to the modern gamer/auditory learner"

Porting all the tutorials to audio isn't going to make modern gamers any more interested in VO. It's just as boring to listen to as it is to read (unless you can't read). Porting the mission information to audio is pointless because people will opt to skip it in lieu of a quick scan of the requirements (unless you can't read).

Kabuloso's suggestion is better, but we ain't gonna see that kind of thing ever.

+1 to OP

-1 for mission voiceovers. Oblivion had those, but there were only like six voice actors. It sucked, badly. GS cannot afford two dozen voice actors to keep things from being stupidly repetitive. Volunteer-work is not an option for this, because volunteers are not reliable. If the wording ever has to be changed, you might not be able to get the original person to re-record it - and if you have to replace the person and the new person's voice doesn't match, you have to re-record all of that character's lines to avoid jarring problems. Plus there are the issues of quality and consistency.

I suppose if they really wanted voice they could take the "Mission computer" approach where you just hire one voice actor who reads the mission log impersonally, without trying to pretend to be the people in the mission.

But I say ignore voiceovers until GS can afford to hire plenty of professionals to do it right.

+1 and maybe when you take missions it could at least have your name in it (%target%) something like that then it would also be more personal?

-1 to voiceovers they suck big time in games , no offense TRS

Many missions do have your name (you write [player] in the mission editor for that to happen).

Just a thought, but what about players doing voice?

It was covered Ryan

Volunteer-work is not an option for this, because volunteers are not reliable. If the wording ever has to be changed, you might not be able to get the original person to re-record it - and if you have to replace the person and the new person's voice doesn't match, you have to re-record all of that character's lines to avoid jarring problems. Plus there are the issues of quality and consistency.

And I agree.

Yeah the issues of quality and consistency is a more convincing argument to me, you need studio quality recordings for this kind of thing, and volunteers just don't have it.

The most important addition is voiceovers. Having to read a lot is not all that appealing to the modern illiterate meathead. FTFY

-1 to Voiceovers. Other games have them and they're awful, waste space, and are costly/time consuming to make as others have already pointed out. I always find them frustrating and try to skip them.

We do need to personalize things more though. The ability to include pictures in mission descriptions and text might help with this a lot for character development on NPCs. Some of the PCC missions have recurring characters who're involved with the mission storylines, but you never really get to know them because of the way the information is presented.

Another problem with the whole "recurring characters" thing is that mission authors have no way to control NPC names. That means that any character who appears in more than one mission has to be either an imaginary character (as in purely a product of the mission text - he never enters a ship to fly alongside you) or else has to have an excuse for why his name is suddenly different.

Portraits would be nice, but they'd probably have to be done via a "character creator" system like various games have. Reason: consistency. If you allow each mission author to upload his own character portraits, quality and style will vary all over the place.

One bonus of doing something like that is that players could be allowed to use it to create portraits for their characters as well, which could appear in their Character Tab. If the station bars are ever expanded, they could possibly be used there as well, or as avatars in the forums, etc. The various badges you can earn could also be optionally applied to the portrait (though they might be difficult to see).

I'll say this: good writing is key to creating an immersive mission. Writing the dialogue in the way a character speaks, with accents, misspelled words, etc. is important.

Being able to name stations by their colloquial name (Not Deneb O-3, but "Elias' Stand") with characters that span the mission tree is important. It worked very well in Our old Mac Favorite Escape Velocity because the writing was marginally good, characters were consistent, and you got a sense of continuity and progression.

Add to that the fact that you can have any number of branches of dialogue, and the mission becomes interesting.

Right now there are just too many missions along the lines of "Here, take this to that station." or "Hey, go here and kill this NPC."

Now, I'm not saying that I'm the best mission-writer in the world (because I quit after making two since the editor was so damned hard to use), but allowing a single mission to have many different results based on decisions, nationalities, previous mission flags, etc. Makes for a much richer experience.

Which, ironically, is why I decided to play again - to go make some missions and see if the editor got any better in 2 years.

@LeberMac

+1 to that, really liked the idea.
As it's not possible to give a face to the NPCs in stations... We could give them names, and personality. Then, missions in each station should be discribed differently, with dialogs.

Maybe some background interation between these NPC characters.

But, as these will increase the amount of mission texts... I'd ask (again) for a brief objective resume of the mission, at the top. Like an items list:

Goal:
Local:
Reward:
Failure penalty:
Add Note: