If you could remove ONE stock mission from any game, what would it be and why?

[Vrex360]

There are a lot of missions in games that are often really similar, often being just the same mission in fact. The thing that gets used in game after game and eventually becomes what I call a 'stock mission' or 'stock objective' where it's a basic thing you have to do that you've done in many games prior to this. As examples I'll say things like escort missions, retrieving one object, defending a certain spot for x amount of time. You know those missions.

Sometimes they get repeated for good measure, other times however I find myself hating them. So I've always wondered if I could delete one of these stock missions which would it be?
For a while my answer was 'endurance rounds' back in Halo 1, when I had to fight the flood and wait for Guilty Spark to come back... which he never seemed to, or at least not until I was singificantly low on ammo. Then my pet hate was 'escort missions' something I grew to hate very passionatley in Dead Rising. Next was the forced flow breaking exploration in Half Life 2. Then finally I grew to loathe time limits, somtimes good but in the case of Saint's Row 2 (an otherwise great game) were just annoying.
So I actually cannot decide, so enough about me.

What one stock mission from games these days would you delete from existance if you could and why that stock mission?

 

[McMarbles]

Escort missions, my god, escort missions.

 

[Neonbob]

Kill X number of things for me. Because there aren't that many, but I'm a lazy asswipe, and you'll do it for much less than what the pros charge.
*mutters*
*twitches*
*snaps, shoves a shiny sword into NPC's head, snaps off the handle*
One down.

 

[macapus]

That fucking driving part on Gears 1. THE ONE FUCKING LEVEL I COULDN'T BEAT ON HARDCORE! WHAT THE FUCK WAS THE POINT OF THAT MISSION, ANYWAY? GEARS' SELLING POINT WAS THE COVER SYSTEM, NOT THE ABILITY TO RAISE BLOODPRESSURE. I honestly would've preferred a cutscene.

I like defending.
It is fun.

I hate picking things up, however. Do I look like a fucking delivery boy?
Does my giant sword say "UPS" on it?
No.
So stop asking me to go get shit - especially if I am part of an organization or something.
There are minions for that.

HAH! Okay, savior of the world. I know your short on cash, so why don't you chew my food for me for money. Oh, wait, in this console RTS i thought i was the hero of the gods, NOT A FUCKING NANNY-SLAVE for the fat, lazy people of my town that isn't even worth saving.

 

[kommando367]

Chase car in heavy traffic missions.

 

[kommando367]

Missions that make you go through swarms of enemies with no variation in enemies. (All of Too Human)

Define variation

 

[Pseudonym2]

That fucking driving part on Gears 1. THE ONE FUCKING LEVEL I COULDN'T BEAT ON HARDCORE! WHAT THE FUCK WAS THE POINT OF THAT MISSION, ANYWAY? GEARS' SELLING POINT WAS THE COVER SYSTEM, NOT THE ABILITY TO RAISE BLOODPRESSURE. I honestly would've preferred a cutscene.

The guy specifically tells when and where they're coming and you have to drive in more or less a straight line. Drive slowly and listen. I beat it on my second or third try and thought it was one of the easiest part in the game. The final boss however...

Playing Dead Rising reminded me of how much I hate escort missions.

 

[suicidal pencil]

If I get told to escort someone who dies when the enemy so much as twitches at them one more time, I'm snapping the necks and burying the bodies of the developers!

 

[Smirskies]

var⋅i⋅a⋅tion   /ˌvɛəriˈeɪʃən/ Show Spelled Pronunciation [vair-ee-ey-shuhn]
?noun 1. the act, process, or accident of varying in condition, character, or degree: Prices are subject to variation.
2. an instance of this: There is a variation in the quality of fabrics in this shipment.
3. amount, rate, extent, or degree of change: a temperature variation of 40° in a particular climate.
4. a different form of something; variant.
5. Music. a. the transformation of a melody or theme with changes or elaborations in harmony, rhythm, and melody.
b. a varied form of a melody or theme, esp. one of a series of such forms developing the capacities of the subject.

6. Ballet. a solo dance, esp. one forming a section of a pas de deux.
7. Astronomy. any deviation from the mean orbit of a heavenly body, esp. of a planetary or satellite orbit.
8. Also called magnetic declination, magnetic variation. Navigation. the angle between the geographic and the magnetic meridian at a given point, expressed in plus degrees east or minus degrees west of true north. Compare deviation (def. 4).
9. Biology. a difference or deviation in structure or character from others of the same species or group.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Origin:
1350?1400; < L variâtiôn- (s. of variâtiô), equiv. to variât(us) (see variate ) + -iôn- -ion; r. ME variacioun < AF < L, as above

Related forms:

var&#8901;i&#8901;a&#8901;tion&#8901;al, var&#8901;i&#8901;a&#8901;tive &#8194;/&#712;v&#603;&#601;ri&#716;e&#618;t&#618;v/ Show Spelled Pronunciation [vair-ee-ey-tiv] Show IPA , adjective
var&#8901;i&#8901;a&#8901;tion&#8901;al&#8901;ly, var&#8901;i&#8901;a&#8901;tive&#8901;ly, adverb


Synonyms:
1. mutation, alteration, modification; deviation, divergence, difference.

 

[Squarewave]

escort missions in action games, unless they are immortal. repeating a mission over and over gets old real fast when the NPCs are too stupid to take cover.

Underwater levels in platformers, no, I do not want to spend 90% of my time looking for air pockets

Timed events in RPGs (you have 10 min to escape the dungeon before it explodes!) I'd rather explore for loot rather then try to speed run my way out

 

[Inco]

Any mission which has instant death traps. They can all go and burn in the depths of hell in my eyes as they were made to extend game play but ironically gets the opposite reaction from me.

Here's a list of some bad ones-

Spoiler

Gears of war 2- The inside of the giant worm, no action, just avoiding things that will kill you instantly every damn time.
Metriod:hunters- The volcano area where if you havent eaten your lucky charms you aint going anywhere, or to be precise- a samus pancake.
Oblivion- Falling rocks, one hour of game play lost cause my tank guy was killed by scenery.
Remember thats only a small list so add more!

 

[balimuzz]

I love missions where you're just expected to defend a spot for a certain amount of time. I actually just played a mission in Starcraft with that underlying theme and loved it. They're so simple, particularly in RTSs. I loved the opening missions in Age of Empires, where all you have to do is defend your base. I'm really bad at finding other peoples bases, so I end up just making a huge defense, and holding out while my teammate deals with the other players. I suck at Starcraft multiplayer if couldn't already tell.

What I hate are escort missions. That whole section of RE4 where you have to take the president's daughter to the various drop-off points was awful. I was happy when she got nabbed again, because it meant I didn't have to deal with her anymore. I liked having Sheva in RE5 though. She was actually helpful aside from her tendency to worry a little too much about the scratch on your shin.

 

[Zosephine]

hmm... I love dictionary websites.

my vote is for escort missions.

 

[Eisenfaust]

escort missions for me too...

the one that sticks in my head is in the original perfect dark where you have to escort the president to his escape pod... he'll run into a room full of bad guys and keep running... or alternatively, you try and hold him back and run foward to clear the bad guys, so you start nailing them and he runs IN FRONT OF YOUR GUN! President dead, mission failed, crappy AI gets burninated...

 

[Dragon Zero]

Oh, where to begin?
(Looks over mental list)
Oooh, here.
Unnecessary racing missions in non-racing titles. I have weapons that make me the equivalent of one of the four horsemen, why sould I not just win by slaughtering my way to number one?

 

[Naeo]

Delivery missions/fetch missions where there's not something ulterior or the dungeon/place is worth going to/through anyways or you find some other large plot development/see some epic scenery that you wouldn't have otherwise. The "go here where there's nothing you can possible get along the way to get some small item that you can't steal and use and bring it back here" missions are so annoying.

Escort missions of a similar nature- where it's ridiculously difficult. Like getting swarmed from all sides. If you can bottleneck, that's one thing- that can be fun. If the person can fight semi-competently for the location/difficulty, it can be fun. If the person is basically anything but a "one touch and die and avoiding that one touch is impossible" they can be fun, except when you repeat them a thousand times. See Dead Rising (survivor escorts, but you can arm them with shotguns and such and it's not so bad) for a prime example.

The "go kill 500 rats" and "go kill 500 boss dragon" missions. 500 rats or other such small monsters sucks so much ass because you usually have to hunt around a lot for all of them after clearing out the 50 in the big city or wait for them to all respawn. And the 500 boss dragons sucks ass because while the loot tends to be awesome in loot-applicable games/circumstances, no one wants to kill 500 epic dragons of immortal doom and such. As a side mission/non-necessary goal with a nice reward these are one thing, but as a storyline mission- like for a guild or faction or the main story- they are atrocious and criminal. A kill counter with, say, a damage reduction bonus at so many kills is one thing but a "kill 500 to advance in the guild" is something totally different.

Missions that are intentionally misleading (not so common, but I've had a few of them). And it's not just the bad guy being like "MY LAIR IS OVER HERE" and you learn later "NO IT'S NOT". Missions like finding the sun stones in Bloodmoon (Morrowind expansion). The guy gave you a sheet of paper with the locations marked on a map. You go to the locations and the stones are another quarter of the god damned island away in at least one case.

The "if you do what you've been doing the whole game you lose". Like the missions in a game where, say, you're a crazy bank robber who kills people like crazy. And then one one bank robbery you just have to walk in and arbitrarily not kill people despite the game being half about killing people in awesome ways- and not because it's part of your heist plan. See Knights of the Nine expansion for Oblivion where if you killed/attacked the one bear you had to retry the mission. And you could kill your way through almost any other mission that wasn't about killing people to get it done.