SUMMARY: Perma-failable missions i) are painfully high-stakes, and ii) disincentivize taking any unknown missions. Therefore, I suggest letting us retry them at a cost.

THE SITUATION:

This topic has been discussed eight years ago: https://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/30329 and thirteen years ago: https://vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/22877 .
Summary of those posts:
- Perma-failable missions are unpleasant because your character can get permanently handicapped
- This can cause "angst quits"
- But there are really very few perma-failable missions (*lists several off the top of their head*)
- "The Fail is strong in these noobs"
- No dev verdict at the time

I'd like to add a few of my thoughts:
1. First, "angst quits" are very much a real thing. I've been playing VO off and on for ~12 years, and almost every time that I quit it's been specifically because I perma-failed a mission and was unwilling to either i) wipe my progress and restart, or ii) continue playing on a permanently handicapped player. So I do neither, and quit.
2. Missions in VO are somewhat mysterious. You don't usually know what you'll get or what future missions are in a tree. Even when its specified in the description, the story can change those things. This means that failing a mission always feels like losing something important, because you don't know for sure what you've lost out on.
3. If you think of a mission as having a "risk" - some amount of effort/value you'll lose upon failure - then perma-failable missions have astronomically more risk than any other mission. This is because the "risk" is a permanent handicap on your whole character, which can only be recovered by starting all over again with a new character. In other words, the risk of taking a perma-failable mission is proportional to play time and increases without limit.
4. As a consequence of these things, I often find myself just ... avoiding unknown missions entirely. Apart from a handful of missions I already know are repeatable, it's just too high-stakes. It feels better to have the unrealized potential for something, than to try it and risk getting a permanent handicap on the character I've invested so much time into. This sucks, because a huge fraction of VO's content is in missions.

THE SUGGESTION:

A repeatable mission "Making Amends" which allows retaking a perma-failed mission.
Requirements:
- A perma-failed mission
- Pillar of Society standing with the relevant faction
Steps:
- Select which perma-failed mission you want a second chance for
Result:
- Lose 1200 rep from the relevant faction (taking you from Pillar -> Disliked)
- Selected mission becomes available again
Cooldown: 13 days

REASONING:

- I chose faction rep because it is an immersive cost (you have high reputation, and therefore may deserve a second chance) and because it is non-transferrable (unlike credits or items). This ensures that failing a perma-failable mission still has a direct, guaranteed effort cost for the player who failed, no matter their wealth or skill.
- Players would need to be informed of MA's existence so they're willing to take risks again. Maybe a short intro mission like with "Faction Standing Recovery"?
- Cooldown is hefty (13 days) to keep even the most online of players from being able to shake off the cost. Failing multiple missions means weeks of delay, no matter what. I chose 13 days instead of 14 to account for weekly schedules (like the 22 hours / 24 hours change that went in recently).

Pros:
- Limits anxiety about missions, because the risk of taking a mission caps out instead of increasing without limit
- Greatly reduce "angst quits" because characters can no longer be permanently handicapped; all characters are "repairable" with enough effort and time
- Missions which are failed due "BS" - eg. internet craps out at the wrong time, lag, interference from trolling players, or simple bad luck - no longer cause as much frustration because the negative effects are no longer indelible

Cons:
- Players who take pride in completing a difficult perma-failable mission first try may feel that their accomplishment has been diminished
- Perma-failing some missions is an intended outcome which moves you around the mission tree. It would probably require the devs to classify these missions to exclude them from being retryable.

What do you think? Are there pros/cons I missed? Is the mission cost too low/high? Can this idea be improved? Do the pros outweigh the cons? Is there a better way to do this?

Thanks for taking the time to read.

- Perma-failable missions are unpleasant because your character can get permanently handicapped

So, as far as I'm aware, this problem doesn't meaningfully exist, and is purely perceptual.

None of the failure-cases listed in this thread actually result in any player being denied any future content or capability within the game, including successive mission trees or unlocks.

I will grant that the perception of perma-failure and being "locked out" of content is probably a poor design choice, and I wasn't fully cognizant of its presence in the game in this way (I didn't make these missions). It can definitely create needless anxiety for the end-user. But it is illusory.

There is no actual "blocking" perma-failure, just a lot of dependent branching trees that continue to lead forward.

I feel you helix; this constitutes most of my aversion to new missions however the solution is relatively simple; patience and strategy.

Whilst it sure as shit isn't trivial to get information on how to conduct these difficult missions by asking around and preparing yourself for them you can greatly increase your chances of success... however shit takes time and in some instances well you just have to know what you're doing there's no other way around it.

At the end of the day I hold the firm belief that missions that permanently "gimp" your character are an integral part of the game and typically upon failure they open up other missions that wouldn't be available otherwise; I haven't ran many of these and I'm practically clueless in general when it comes to missions so this addition oughta be taken with a grain of salt.

Outside of abnormal conditions (bugs network shit... etc... etc) you shouldn't have too hard a time clearing a mission that you've adequately informed yourself about; when it comes to new missions it's going to take awhile for the rest of the community to play through them and discover fail/success conditions, once you know these there's almost always a way to cheeze them by exploiting game mechanics to complete it even when the mission throws an angry swarm of shit at you.

TL;DR: It's an integral part of the game and I'm not keen on being able to reset failed missions outside of doing it through other missions written specifically for that mission tree that work with the roleplaying/story of whatever mission was failed.

VO's a persistent universe, and failing missions permanently is part of it having a master button/mission to reset failures breaks this.

So, as far as I'm aware, this problem doesn't meaningfully exist, and is purely perceptual.

Pretty sure one of my characters is completely locked-out of manufacturing the Centurion Superlight because I ran into an ion storm during one of the missions and it just wasn't capable of dealing with that...

Which branch of what tree fixes that?

Pretty sure one of my characters is completely locked-out of manufacturing the Centurion Superlight

Again, according to my information that is incorrect. There should always be a branch that allows continued progress. I'd suggest playing more missions.