The police scanner missions are similar to many of the points of interest in the Witcher 3, but they do not make sense of feel meaningful in the context of Night CIty. I think a few tiny changes could radically improve their ~meaningfulness.
1. Urgency: NCPD instances that imply urgency ("assault in progress") should not appear on your map until you are near them. Then, you should be alerted to them with a countdown timer. If you do not get there in time, you lose that opportunity. If you arrive after the timer goes off, there should be NCPD standing around instead of hostiles. It does not make sense that an assault in progress would wait hours or days for you to get around to it.
2. Lore: Given how quickly the NCPD responds when you run over a civilian, it doesn't make sense that they would send a merc (V), rather than officers, for myriad other crimes. A "text" from a NCPD sergeant should precede the first police scanner mission. It should say something like the following, based on your street cred:
"You've recently developed a reputation on the streets. If you think you could handle it, I might have a job or two for you." ... "The NCPD's resources have to be allocated towards...high-value citizens. We can't respond to every thug getting his ass beat. But, we don't like leaving a mess on the streets. If you're in the area when we get a report, you can help clean up your city by taking care of the situation and sending us any evidence you find so we don't have to send out a team."
Or something like that. After you reply to the text and agree to do these missions, you could start getting police scanner quests.
3. Purpose: There needs to be some sentimental sense of purpose in completing these missions. If you rescue someone from an assault, you could get a text later. After an arbitrary number of such quests, you could get a text from NCPD thanking you, and/or sending over a specific reward. It would be even better (but implausible without extensive development resources) if there were specific subsequent outcomes with voice-acted future interactions with NCPD influenced by your completion of scanner missions, whether happy or dark and cynical. You could eventually get e.g. a "gun for hire" mission to kill the NCPD officer who sent you on the scanner missions, and have a choice to kill him or side with him and fail the mission.
1. Urgency: NCPD instances that imply urgency ("assault in progress") should not appear on your map until you are near them. Then, you should be alerted to them with a countdown timer. If you do not get there in time, you lose that opportunity. If you arrive after the timer goes off, there should be NCPD standing around instead of hostiles. It does not make sense that an assault in progress would wait hours or days for you to get around to it.
2. Lore: Given how quickly the NCPD responds when you run over a civilian, it doesn't make sense that they would send a merc (V), rather than officers, for myriad other crimes. A "text" from a NCPD sergeant should precede the first police scanner mission. It should say something like the following, based on your street cred:
"You've recently developed a reputation on the streets. If you think you could handle it, I might have a job or two for you." ... "The NCPD's resources have to be allocated towards...high-value citizens. We can't respond to every thug getting his ass beat. But, we don't like leaving a mess on the streets. If you're in the area when we get a report, you can help clean up your city by taking care of the situation and sending us any evidence you find so we don't have to send out a team."
Or something like that. After you reply to the text and agree to do these missions, you could start getting police scanner quests.
3. Purpose: There needs to be some sentimental sense of purpose in completing these missions. If you rescue someone from an assault, you could get a text later. After an arbitrary number of such quests, you could get a text from NCPD thanking you, and/or sending over a specific reward. It would be even better (but implausible without extensive development resources) if there were specific subsequent outcomes with voice-acted future interactions with NCPD influenced by your completion of scanner missions, whether happy or dark and cynical. You could eventually get e.g. a "gun for hire" mission to kill the NCPD officer who sent you on the scanner missions, and have a choice to kill him or side with him and fail the mission.
