I think E3 is fine. That’s roughly the kind of gear level you can expect a character to have at the end of South Africa without the aid of daily patron distillates if they don’t skip too many main or side quests.
I also think that all three of the faction missions should start at E3.
Is this a guess? Because it sounds like a guess. 
I’m definitely in the camp that everything in the game that has a story should be available in story mode. That’s kind of the point of story mode, after all.
It’s not a guess. I’ve played enough characters through the story with and without patron distillates to have a pretty good idea of the gear level you’ll be at without grinding dungeons, lairs and scenarios.
Starsmith’s comments seem to support my observations. But feel free to make your own!
My observation would be that you probably can’t apply your playstyle to the entire playerbase because I’m sure plenty of people play through the “main” story and skip lots of the non-essential stuff (especially if they find it difficult) and/or don’t use all of the mission rewards they receive to enhance their gear in an optimal fashion.
Granted, people who skipped stuff because they only really cared about the “main” plot probably won’t be too heartbroken to miss a few more missions but people who want to see all the story but aren’t even remotely concerned with gearing or building optimally still exist.
it is actually super hard to stay awake during the course of this exercise.
Pretty easy, boring and recycled content. That new SA mission… lol, seriously? Like 3 minute Sabotage missions, where you kill one dude. Ha!
All what these “new” missions did, was making me facepalm that we were forced out from TSW because of this kind of “advancing the game” crap.
“Hard” in the context of SWL. Which is, pretty much, “meant for higher IP”.
This isn’t TSW anymore.
True. In TSW all new content was hard (next dungeons after DW, first version on Tokyo, first runs of New York Raid, first runs of Eidelon, first solo NM Scenarios, first runs of Tokyo Dungeons…). It didnt have to have certain gear (IP) reguirements, they were just plain hard for starters until you “get” them. In SWL, everything is boring easy, except to those who freshly started with low IP. Nothing new content have offered real challenge to end gamers. Im not end gamer, and everything is easy AF. Labeling same content, what you have to do over and over again as “hard”, is pretty much over shooting.
Indeed, E3 is probably an upper limit, I remember when they released the elite tiers, that I needed to actively farm dungeons to unlock E2 and E3 (but it was before kaidan and the lowering of IP requirements for dungeons).
The gear can vary based on subscriber/non subscriber status (mostly due to daily caches that have a good impact on item power at lower power levels), knowledge and events.
For instance, my alts on my non subscriber accounts are 107 and 142 item power mid early-mid kaidan (E3 is 250). So it’s possible for a cautious and slow paced subscriber to reach 250 by the end of SA (especially with the caches).
Nevertheless, If we go for a real storymode of those missions, I don’t think it makes much sense to put an arbitrary IP gate. It should be doable and readily available to any casual player who reached the logical time for those missions. Moreover, In those cases monsters shouldn’t feel like boring hit sponges unless it has narrative relevance.
Thank you for the return of faction missions, for this loot of glyph xp elsewhere than in the scenar and in this level system that is (for me) a success!
I took a lot of fun to rediscover his old missions and especially to have a new addition where everything becomes rush because my equipment makes me oneshot the mobs. This is a great idea, it was a request from the community (thank you for listening) and I hope we will find it on the rest of the content to come!
Now, I’m waiting for you to hear the other raids as well (Eidolon or / and Flappy) 
As a blood main without Cruel Delight or other miracle cures I struggled quite a bit with some of the boss fights at E10. I had to play extremely defensively, which of course made them last even longer.
It certainly isn’t, and it makes me sad to see what was once my favourite game reduced to this. They lost me as a player a long time ago and I wouldn’t recommend SWL in its current form to any of my friends. The only reason I continue to log in is to use my daily cache key, and I probably won’t continue to do that forever…
The ‘new’ faction missions aren’t hard. The fight’s because of the bigger health pools are just boring to get through.
As for a story mode version - it’s silly to not have one. Story mode raid, dungeons, scenarios are lvl 50 no IP number required. Next jump is ip 175. If I was a casual, story only sort to get gated by this content for no reason, it’s solo so not hurting a group, etc., I’d be mad.
Besides the fact calling VMC a faction mission is a stretch, although I guess we can make the leap that the Phoenicians are a faction.
I get the feeling it’s kept in because of the story implications of the new Lore pieces.
Oh no. 
My weakest character found the first two quests very challenging, but doable. The other two pretty much breezed through. All done on max possible level, two E5 and one E9. (Only the E9 has Cruel Delight.)
I’d seen them before but I really liked how the Dragon version was redone with Daimon.
Does anyone know what agents drop from the first two missions? The faction one is guaranteed from Rogue Agent, but the other two also have a chance to drop something.
Into Darkness gives the Uniform and the faction mask, VMC gives a Uniform, and Rogue Agent give Uniform + Agent
Who are the Agents given? I know Dragon gives you Dae-Su, your ‘Combat Trainer’ from the beginning. Does Templar give out Brigadier Lethe and Illuminati gives De La Guarda?
Yes.
Nice! This update’s looking better and better for me. I like these characters and they got kinda short-changed in the TSW to SWL transfer. This is a neat idea to repurpose them.