Currently when you are in a mission you cannot see other available missions.

In the case of Deneb, you cannot see when an enemy joins a different skirmish while you are in an active mission. This has strategic consequence.

Please display all available missions always.

Well, we made things that way because people tended to be confused about the mission they were "on", versus other available missions.

If anything, that's a subject that has become more problematic over time, and I've been looking for further ways to clarify that you are currently on a mission and should not take another one.

I'm not sure some specific Deneb situation makes it worthwhile to upend the entire mission-UX of the game. What is the "strategic consequence" that you're trying to solve? The fact that someone else is fighting another skirmish?

Yes, re: deneb.

Tangentially: would there be a way to merge all Deneb missions into one -- where your participation is tracked across general military engagements in the system, rather than individual skirmishes?

So "Deneb Warfare" would be a single mission, and within it is indicated the current active skirmishes and whether or not they have human enemy participants?

What? That would only make it even more easier to get confused. -1

What is the "strategic consequence" that you're trying to solve? The fact that someone else is fighting another skirmish?

Is this what you're responding to with "Yes, re: deneb."? That's certainly.. terse.

I don't know why I should care whether you know that someone is fighting another skirmish after you decided to fight the skirmish you're already participating in.

Deneb uses the global mission system. We are not likely to re-write the global mission system exclusively for Deneb. I value Deneb, but it is not the primary use-case for the mission system UX / design, nor the highest-priority.

Anyway, Rule #5 of the Suggestions Forum is to be thorough in explaining the value of your Suggestion, including tradeoffs, other ramifications, etc. This thread is pretty lacking.

Deneb is all about achieving skirmish wins. Battles are most effectively won by placing your efforts where they are most needed. Usually this is where there are other human players involved on the opposing team. If you are tootling around by yourself in a small skirmish and an enemy joins a medium, unbeknownst to you, you stand to lose that medium...AND have less fun because you are only fighting NPCs.

Since PVP is something most who do Deneb battles enjoy, and facilitating the pursuit of which is presumably at last one major reason that you decided to introduce the asterisk indicating humans in the mission, then allowing those active in Deneb to most effectively monitor enemy participation furthers this cause.

It seems silly that I would have to actually leave my mission to periodically to see if someone else had joined a different mission. Perhaps there's a different means of alerting when an enemy picks up the sword in another battle?

If you are tootling around by yourself in a small skirmish and an enemy joins a medium, unbeknownst to you, you stand to lose that medium...AND have less fun because you are only fighting NPCs.

That also presumes that the other person has the same personal preferences as you, despite the fact that they explicitly chose a mission that did not have someone playing, while you were already playing.

The mission-mechanics of Deneb are not really structured around 1-vs-1 battle choices, nor is it likely to become that way.

However, I don't have a problem with adding some other mechanism for announcing real-time player involvement in Deneb, that would be interesting? It could be universe-wide, for that matter, and further attract players. There may even be some historical topics and ideas on that.

But, I'm not sure about making these specific mission-system changes. I don't pretend that the current system is ideal for Deneb; rather that it's primarily designed for something other than Deneb, and Deneb does not have the weight of importance to universally change it everywhere.

And the mission system should fundamentally work the same way, everywhere, so people have a chance at understanding what's going on.

That also presumes that the other person has the same personal preferences as you, despite the fact that they explicitly chose a mission that did not have someone playing, while you were already playing.

I find it hard to believe your intention of showing player involvement was to facilitate avoidance as much as it was interaction, but ok fine. My suggestion centers on people who want to play with other people, yes.

Do you want a new thread for "other mechanism for announcing real-time player involvement"?

I find it hard to believe your intention of showing player involvement was to facilitate avoidance as much as it was interaction, but ok fine. My suggestion centers on people who want to play with other people, yes.

It wasn't expected to facilitate avoidance, but the game is intended to let people choose to play how they like.

Do you want a new thread for "other mechanism for announcing real-time player involvement"?

If you come up with a mechanism, sure? Or if you want to do some searching of older discussions that might exist, and reference those (if you think they have merit).

I think there was one about some kind of "news ticker" type idea? What we're talking about here ultimately has a lot broader applications than just Deneb, there's certainly value to better methods of generally improving player awareness of "transient" content and player aggregation.

But, that kind of discussion would belong in another thread.

+1
I'm endorsing the idea that the mission board could be improved in small ways. Perhaps a checkbox on the mission page called "Show current mission only" so it can be toggled to show all. Also the idea of announcing players who join Deneb skirmishes I think is an awesome idea. It could cause quite the stir and some nice Vendettas over Deneb!

Another possibility is to add the number of player participants to the mission title in parens:

Small Border Skirmish (3)