I've never seen this done in a game and it might be because it's potentially tedious, but I'm thinking of it as a means of both enhancing missions and giving the player the creative fun of in game mission design. In most games where you can accept or reject optional missions you get very little control over the parameters of the mission. But what if you were in the role of free agent and, based on a growing reputation, had the power to alter the terms of the mission you selected? The first option would be to alter the nature of the rewards. Maybe you don't want money? Maybe you want access to resources owned by the patron / mission giver. Or maybe you want a discount for N months or for the next X purchases. And about that "destroy all Y enemies" clause: What if you could raise the amount (and risk to yourself) and thus get the power to gain more reward, or vice versa lower it and thus lower the risk and reward you'd be taking on? In the space trader I'm working on I was thinking about this in terms of a drag & drop and button or slider interface where the elements exist in a couple of columns and negotiation is a sort of minigame. Contracts would be standard with standard things offered, so you don't have to set it up from scratch. But I want to create a sort of risk/reward strategy in that you can ask for more at the risk of alienating your patron. The greater the risks you take on, the higher the reward would be, and not just in money, but in their regard of you and your reputation at large. One big problem with a system like this is that it's often hard to tell what the AI would want. Ideally contract "negotiations" might be broken into rounds of offer/counter offer the more intricate the mission. So "kill ship X" might be straightforward, whereas "conquer system X" has lots of negotiable parts. Thoughts?

Sounds like a great idea. I like the idea of 'round' proposals, offer too much one round and the NPC will decide you aren't worth the trouble but get it right and you'll squeeze extra goodies out of them - if there are RPG elements you could also add a 'barter' statistic which increases either on how good you are at haggling or simply increases over time (as experience increases).

Another possible way could be to do it in real-time, whereby you may have just one minute to alter the sliders and try and find the best deal. When your minute is up its accept or decline time. This sounds like it would be quite arcade-y so you'd have to decide whether it fits the feel of your game.

As for tedium, I'd agree there is a possibility for this to be tedious. Sounds great the first couple of times you encounter bargaining for missions but for most scenarios I can imagine there being an optimal amount of reward and once experienced players work out this optimal amount it becomes trivial (and thus, probably boring). I guess random elements could be added to discussions to stop gameplay converging to an oft seen optimal solution.

It would definitely immerse the player into the world more though and is a good idea.

I'd suggest it being an 'optional' element or only limited to 'major' contracts.

Otherwise, I'd get bored after I've done it a few times.

I think that if you had to re-haggle for every contract and you got more than 4 contracts, then yes, it would be very tedious.

To avoid this, perhaps make it only available for some missions and give it a high risk and reward. That way, the question won't be "can I be bothered to get a better deal" it is, "is it worth the risk?"

A little like the trading/diplomacy in Civ IV maybe? :)

Thanks for the replies. In terms of this being optional, I imagine it as a normal mission screen with elements that are clickable or selectable.

Didn't the first Fable have a system similar to this?

You just walked up to a pedestal and picked what challenges you wanted to do, like do the mission naked or win it without taking a hit and you got more money and Renown.

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Original post by furiousuk if there are RPG elements you could also add a 'barter' statistic which increases either on how good you are at haggling or simply increases over time (as experience increases).

Thanks for the feedback. Yes I like the RPG dimension, and could really run with this, making success not just an overall negotiation skill but some sort of combination of skills in keeping with the sci-fi theme, like "psych" + "business" or some other combo. I could even introduce a faction angle in terms of passive skill increase so that your ability to deal with one faction or another naturally rises over time.

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Another possible way could be to do it in real-time, whereby you may have just one minute to alter the sliders and try and find the best deal. When your minute is up its accept or decline time. This sounds like it would be quite arcade-y so you'd have to decide whether it fits the feel of your game.

I'll think about this. I'm a little leary of time limits when reading is required because we all read at different speeds.

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As for tedium, I'd agree there is a possibility for this to be tedious. Sounds great the first couple of times you encounter bargaining for missions but for most scenarios I can imagine there being an optimal amount of reward and once experienced players work out this optimal amount it becomes trivial (and thus, probably boring). I guess random elements could be added to discussions to stop gameplay converging to an oft seen optimal solution.

What I'd really have to decide is whether or not the patrons in the universe naturally lowball people. If it's a common thing, then even if it's not mandatory it sort of becomes mandatory because the player will know that he's getting cheated each time the mission screen comes up.

If I do this it probably should be based on the faction you deal with. Maybe the more greedy the faction, the more sucky the initial mission offerings?

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Original post by Cpt Mothballs Didn't the first Fable have a system similar to this? You just walked up to a pedestal and picked what challenges you wanted to do, like do the mission naked or win it without taking a hit and you got more money and Renown.

Cool! Never played Fable but this sounds similar, provided you can optionally select these things.

Yeah, you didn't have to do them, but they were there if you wanted to.

You couldn't select how you got your reward, but really, money can buy resources anyway. So you should only really offer to change the reward for unique items or ultra-rares.