Player Features and Ideas Discussion

I’m sure that quite a few of us did COSMOS missions, after months of not even knowing about them. Still to this day, I inform players as old as 2 to 3 years about them who have never even known of their existence. To add, the items and blueprints from the missions are pretty weak, but in turn they really haven’t been moved around the market enough to inherit a demand. I plan to offer a solution that could raise interest in such mission, and the game overall.

I’d also like to point out the thread that has been made for such a topic, but is now locked for being so old: http://community.eveonline.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=814061

On the other thread, I agree with the OP about the needed changes for items, and have a similar solution below.


[COSMOS Missions]

Even 6 months after I started playing EVE, I never knew nor heard about COSMOS missions at all. It wasn’t much later that I was reading up on the standing mechanics that I finally learned that such missions existed. With that said, why don’t we have anything to really tell us about these various hidden places? I understand part of it is an accomplishment from exploration, but in reality most people are just going to search various references to find it.

So why not add a POI list in each region’s main hub? Let’s say a Point of Interest button in the main stations, which would only provide a list of various systems with POIs like level 1 COSMOS missions, Datacenters, Level 1 Storyline agents (for the storyline courier missions for each race). With this, we aren’t giving all the info away, but providing people with a clue where to start, and possibly giving them the motivation to explore the areas around the given areas finding everything else.

One last thing about the missions, is why can’t we have at least 1 or 2 repeatable missions on each faction? Maybe make it a level 4 that doesn’t require standing, but requires the player to have finished the last COSMOS mission for that faction. To add to the missions, why not make the COSMOS missions never time out like an Epic Arc mission? There have been many times when I ended up reading a mission in the Amarr COSMOS that there was no way I was getting to any time soon. I would petition a GM to reset the mission, and all was good. My point is, I have petitioned GMs about 4 or 5 times for this, so why not make them stay until they are completed, and offered again after being declined?


[COSMOS Items]

As we see, all of the faction items from COSMOS missions are only slightly better than T2, and cost a decent amount of isk just to create each one. Besides the cost of buying the science skill books to even use the blueprints (Talocan, Yan Jung, Takmahl), why not have NPCs selling the artifacts needed at a lower cost? On top of that, lower the amount of the other materials needed to create such, and possibly remove or use lower cost datafiles for the blueprints in question. In doing so, we provide a cost-efficient meta 6-7 item that would be considered for fitting. With the POI interface as well, many more of the blueprints and items will be seeded by players into the market, finally making these items part of the economy. This in turn will also give the various different science skills a demand, instead of just being another skill industry characters feel they need to learn to get the total 55.


[Summary]

Something needs to be done to make COSMOS missions more viable, aside from the extremely expensive items given at the end. We need a way to direct players to these missions shortly after the first month of playing the game, and making the missions rewards worth it to everyone. Last, we need to make the missions a little more failsafe when accepting and rejecting.