Talk:Missions

Since these are covered in the walkthrough, does anyone think they need seperate pages? I'd like to break down the walkthrough a bit more and then just link each of these to the relevant subsection. Any objections? --TarkisFlux 02:39, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I've started breaking down the walkthrough a bit, and have linked the missions to those sections. Not quite sure how to deal with the overarching Race Against Time mission; that one might need it's own page since it doesn't deal with any specific portion of the game. Any thoughts on these redirects? --TarkisFlux 02:45, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

ME2 loyalty missions
I am not sure that the heading paragraph should say:

"Loyalty Missions are optional and will not hinder the progression of the story if Shepard does not complete them. However they may alter the final outcome.",

considering the potential impact of not performing these missions (special power of the team member not available, possible, if not 100% sure death in the final mission).

I would rather rephrase it, as follow:

"Loyalty Missions may be skipped. This will not block the progression of the main story line. However, you should be aware that doing this could seriously impact the performance of your team and alter the final outcome."

Your thoughts (as I am aware that this is potential spoiler material, which should be avoided on a summary page, I prefer to discuss that before implementation)?

Celorilm 11:26, February 1, 2010 (UTC)


 * That seems to me to strike a good balance. I can't see anyone getting too spoiled by that (no more than seeing all of the mission names anyway&hellip;. ) --DRY 17:13, February 1, 2010 (UTC)

No other reactions? No objections? If so, I will implement within the next 24 hours... Celorilm 03:25, February 3, 2010 (UTC)

As no objection, implemented change. Celorilm 20:57, February 5, 2010 (UTC)

Formating proposals
Please don't make major changes to the format of the summaries without first gaining community consensus through discussion. (In particular, tabular data would be far simpler to implement and maintain using DPL.) It would also be advantageous – but by no means necessary – if everything could be switched over at once. --DRY 03:34, February 2, 2010 (UTC)


 * I completely agree that it seems a perfectly sensible policy to "make no major change without first seeking, then reaching community consensus" and cannot really see who could advise against and for which reasons.


 * On question though: how do you propose to confirm that a sufficient consensus has been reached?


 * Also a technical question from a quite new wiki contributor, though eager to learn the better practices: what is DPL (a link that would explain maybe)? Celorilm 13:48, February 2, 2010 (UTC)


 * As you might imagine with such a fluid community, there is no precise definition of consensus. Usually, I use last contribution time as a yardstick: if a topic has not received any new contributions for a while, I assume that discussion has ceased and a decision can be made. Keep in mind that we have contributors from multiple time zones, so a wait time of twenty four hours may be a good idea. Note that this is by no means official policy. (DPL is DynamicPageList, a wiki extension which allows building lists from sets of pages.) --DRY 17:28, February 2, 2010 (UTC)


 * Once again, I agree. My own proposal to define a reasonable consensus would have been: wait for a reasonable number of reactions to a proposal and that there are no more new ones for some time (24/48 H).
 * I understand this is no official policy, but I definitely think it is a good practice :).
 * Thanks for you explanation on DPL -- Celorilm 03:20, February 3, 2010 (UTC)

Plot Missions section for ME2 improvement proposal
I find the current section layout unclear, especially regarding the time line.

In order to fix that, I would propose the following rewrite:

Plot missions

These are the missions corresponding to the main story line, in time order (considering the earliest time you can acquire them). To clarify the time line, the main "Stop the Collectors" mission has been divided into its different sub-parts, as they appear when developping it in the Journal.


 * Prologue: Save Joker
 * &rarr; Prologue: Awakening


 * Freedom's Progress (mission)
 * Stop the Collectors: Assemble a team (1)
 * Citadel: The Council
 * Citadel: Captain Bailey
 * Omega: Aria T'Loak
 * Tuchanka: Urdnot Wrex
 * Stop the Collectors: Go to Horizon
 * Horizon (mission)
 * Stop the Collectors: Assemble a team (2)
 * Illium: Liara: The Observer
 * Stop the Collectors: Investigate Collector Ship
 * Collector Ship
 * Stop the Collectors: Acquire Reaper IFF
 * Reaper IFF
 * Stop the Collectors: Await IFF Installation
 * Stop the Collectors: Use Omega-4 Relay
 * &rarr; Stop the Collectors: Defeat the Collectors
 * &rarr; Collector Base: Infiltration
 * &rarr; Collector Base: The Long Walk

The only sensible way I could find to better outline the time line was to split the all encompassing "Stop the Collectors" mission into sub-missions, so that, if they do not appear, as such, at the first level of your Journal, each correspond to one step in the main mission when you open it. The drawback is that it produces a quite artificial division between, for instance, Stop the Collectors: Go to Horizon (which is a sub-part of "Stop the Collectors", where you receive a message from the Illusive Man, informing you that a collector attack is in progress on the Horizon colony and requiring that go there to investigate and attempt to stop it) and Horizon (mission) (which is the actual field mission on the planet). But, this is the way the game quest Journal is designed and I could not find any better way to, at the same time, outline the plot according to the time line and include all missions that actually exist in the Journal.

My rule to determine the order of the missions was as follow: - each mission appears the first time it can become available (as far as I can tell), - if 2 missions or more can potentially appear at the same time, they are ordered alphabetically (which is the reason for the Citadel/Omega/Tuchanka local missions)

I was not 100% sure of the meaning of the "&rarr;" sign, but used it as meaning "this mission immediately follows the previous one and they must be performed in sequence, with no side trip in between". Can you confirm?

This leaves only one mmission in my Journal unaccounted for: Dr. Okeer's Legacy, which I would recommend to place in the "Dossier missions" section, right after Dossier: The Warlord, as it is a "substitute" recruitment mission, acquired when completing this Dossier mission.

A small side question: as writing my proposal, I noticed that, trying to link "Journal", I could not find any fitting article. Do we have a "Game concepts" section? If yes, was the "Journal" named differently in ME1 (I could not say, my ME1 version being a french one)? If not, would not it be a good idea to start one?

I am eagerly waiting for your comments. --Celorilm 12:44, February 2, 2010 (UTC)


 * I tend to agree that the list of plot missions should probably follow the actual in-game flow to as close a degree as is reasonable. Owing to the mission prefixes the text will look a little jumbled, but that is probably no worse (and perhaps better) than a "keeping the prefixes together" approach. (It is called "Journal" in ME1 as well; some game play related articles can be found in Category:Gameplay, but I doubt that list is exhaustive.)--DRY 17:49, February 2, 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for your help. I will go adding a "Journal" page now that I know where to fit it :). I will wait for some more comments to consider we reached an acceptable consensus before implementing... Celorilm 18:31, February 2, 2010 (UTC)


 * AFAIK the &rarr; was used in the ME1 missions to indicate a plot thread, where one mission unlocked another, closely related mission; but it's probably used in other contexts as well. --DRY 19:43, February 2, 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the clarification. Based upon that and some thinking over the way things happen at the end, I will use it a little more for the final part of my proposal.

Also checking more closely, I have found that the existing Horizon and Freedom's Progress pages actually were planet/colony type of pages and in no way corresponding to the such named ME2 plot missions. Therefore, I have proposed to allow creating the mission pages to use a "(On)" prefix that will provide disambiguation as well as clarification, as each of these missions actually corresponds to your visit on the planet...

Your thoughts? Any other reactions? -- Celorilm 03:57, February 3, 2010 (UTC)


 * I'd suggest a "(mission)" (or similar) suffix myself. Note also that for ME1, the mission "pages" were in fact redirects to sections of the Mass Effect Guide. --DRY 04:10, February 3, 2010 (UTC)

I agree that your suffix suggestion is probably clearer (having considered it myself), so I integrated it.

My plan regarding the not-yet existing pages was as follow: once the new list is implemented, create stub pages from it and start filling them using the relevant content from the Mass Effect 2 Guide, then add "(see [mission page] for details)" links in the guide, as I think the most detailed descriptions of each mission should, in the end, be held in a separate page to avoid the guide becoming too detailed and therefore difficult to read.

For instance, somebody recently suggested trying to integrate into the Guide references to unique objects, such as upgrade plans, as they were encountered during missions. I think it is a good idea to hold such information in dedicated, very detailed mission pages, but certainly not in the Guide itself. One of the main points of having an hypertext database as a wiki, instead of a pure text walkthroug, is to facilitate information maintenance by keeping it in separated units of reasonable size. The Guide can be good as a starting point and overview, but trying to fit everything into it would defeat, in my opinion, the purpose of having a wiki...

What do you think? Anybody else caring to comment? --Celorilm 11:45, February 3, 2010 (UTC)


 * FWIW that sounds pretty reasonable to me. It would be nice to see something similar done for ME1 too. However, you might want to consider explicitly checking over on Talk:Mass Effect 2 Guide to see if anyone objects or has a conflicting major project of their own in the works &mdash; although what you've already done is probably sufficient. [This is by no means an official policy but it may save edit conflicts and/or editor conflicts ] (BTW, one subtle advantage for using parenthesized suffixes is that the wiki provides direct support for them: "Horizon (mission)" automatically renders as "Horizon", which saves a little bit of typing in contexts where you don't want the whole page name in the link text.) --DRY 16:33, February 3, 2010 (UTC)

I have already pointed to this discussion in one of my comments on Talk:Mass Effect 2 Guide, but I can check again.

Thanks for your technical clarification regarding suffix vs. prefix use, that could handy indeed. Celorilm 09:37, February 4, 2010 (UTC)


 * No objections noted, either in the discussion above, or on the Talk:Mass Effect 2 Guide page, so I am implementing. Thanks again for your useful precisions and suggestions, DRY. Celorilm 16:02, February 5, 2010 (UTC)

First part of the plan implemented, with quite "squeletal" stubs as the detailed mission pages for now.

Next step, on which I will work during the next days, consists in copying text from te guide into the relevant detailed mission pages, as well as adding links to these pages in the guide. Celorilm 21:07, February 5, 2010 (UTC)


 * A small question, DRY. I did not understand the reason for your undo on my latest change attempting to make clear that the field mission at Freedom's Progress happened directly after the end of the Prologue: Awakening mission, with absolutely no other option than doing one after another (right after you leave the discussion with the Illusive Man closing Prologue: Awakening, with a mission summary displayed, you find yourself in a shuttle heading to the colony for investigation... I actually implemented the change after replaying the prologue and feeling it was wrong to treat the chaining between these missions differently). I do not see how the flow is broken? or how the theme is more different between these two missions than the two previous ones? Could you please explain your point? Celorilm 17:58, February 6, 2010 (UTC)


 * I felt that there was a strong break between the prologue at the point when you arrive at the station and speak with the Illusive Man. There is a strong break in the action and there are other things you can do there (speak with team, change appearance).  The prologue seems to be over at that point, a sense which is reinforced by the lack of a "Prologue" prefix on the next mission.  --DRY 18:06, February 6, 2010 (UTC)

Illium Mission
Per DRY comments on the Talk:Assignments page, I have moved the Illium missions here becuase they appear under the mission tab of the journal. If they seem to be in an inappropiate place then please move them. I figured that since they don't fit under the plot, dossier, or loyalty missions, a new heading seem appropiate. Lancer1289 18:22, March 28, 2010 (UTC)


 * As I have stated in the Assignments talk page, I didn't moved the link into the Missions initially as I felt the Missions was written with the main plot in mind, hence placing Liara's mission seems out of place. Teugene 18:28, March 28, 2010 (UTC)


 * (Edit conflict) Lancer1289, we pseudo-edit-conflicted on this since we both edited different sections . I wondered the same thing but ended up putting them under plot missions only because that's where Citadel: Captain Bailey was as well.  (I may well be mistaken, but I don't think that one was "plot" either, in the sense that it blocks progress &mdash; but I can't check right now.)  There's definitely room for debate though, and if you want to split them out again, please feel free.  --DRY 18:33, March 28, 2010 (UTC)