Missions & Complexes

Hey folks, here is an update on our earlier post.


NPC Tracking disruptor update:

After looking at this thread feedback this issue has been reopened internally (we thought it fixed a few weeks back). No promises on a resolution yet but we are currently looking into this.


A bit of further explanation on our previous post as well, since there has been quite some conversation about it:

EVE PvE systems, mainly mission running, are terribly outdated and are due for a change. Exactly how and when is not something we can state on the paper, but we had having several internal discussions on how this could be done.

One of them is to bring PvE closer to PvP as mentioned before. What does that mean exactly? It means significantly reducing NPC numbers and bringing their attributes, AI closer with what you would expect from a PvP encounter. NPC bounties could be merged, or moved on progressive secondary objectives that require more and more skill from the player to achieve, while possibly having more risk. For instance, saving the Damsel could pay less or the same than it does today, but you could get extra rewards for completing special, more difficult objectives like rescuing her in a specific period of time, or blowing the evil Zor up before he runs away with her sister in his ship cargohold. Keep in mind this remain just an theoretical idea though that is most likely going to change if and when we start work on this particular point.

Reducing NPC numbers also allows us to better scale EW player faces on a regular basis (mainly, we are referring to missions like the Blockade here). Assigning strong EW effects to few NPCs is fine, but it becomes horribly frustrating when faced with 5 full waves of NPCs sensor dampening you, as there is little the player can do to counter it. We should be relying on gameplay players can overcome if they are smart instead of brute force mechanics.

Why are we considering changing PvE like this? That is because we are running missions and PvE content ourselves, and we are not particularly fond of the stale state PvE is in EVE Online right now, except for the most recent content (Incursions and Wormholes). Missions and exploration should let players gamble with risk if they feel up to it. While people looking for quick and relaxing content should still be able to do so, we also want players to find excitement from accomplishing missions and feel great about it. You should not be forced to shoot the same dull and repetitive encounters if you don’t feel up to it. It is a tricky thing to achieve though, as it does not mean we want you to lose ships every mission either.

This would also be done to put mission runners more on an equal footing with hostile players when moving into hazardous space. People accomplishing missions in low-security or null-security space should not be at a disadvantage when engaged by other players because they have ship fittings tailored to fight NPCs. Ideally, battling NPCs should teach players how PvP works, how to defend and be better prepared about it should they choose to move into dangerous areas.

We often hear "EVE is a PvP game, PvE is secondary". To this we would like to respond that EVE is a sandbox and shouldn’t necessarily favor one side over the other. What you do with it is up to you: all player activities should feel as appealing and rewarding no matter which choice you take, as long as you are willing to live up with the consequences of your actions.


You are murdering our drone ships!

We are aware of the recent changes brought by the NPC AI. As said in our previous post, the first NPC behavior deployed for Retribution was too extreme and has been corrected. However, we are aware that drone ships are receiving the short end of the stick here and have been ignored for quite a bit.

This is especially valid since as the tiericide initiative continues, we are adding more drone hulls, but not looking at the drone mechanics themselves, which do need much love. Again, while we are not in a position to state how or when such revamp will happen, this definitely is on our to-do list not only to rebalance drones in general, but also update their behavior, improve their handling through the UI and finally add more combat options for players choosing to specialize in such gameplay. The need for such drone rebalance will only grow with time as we keep on rebalancing ships, so we do hope this can be done as soon as humanly possible.


Oops, now I've written a wall of text Well anyway, we hope this do help a bit.

Awesome to hear that Ytterbium. However I have a request. It is my long pet peeve that loot drops usually have very little to do with what NPC rats were using against me, so when you get to do missions and rats overhaul please consider adjusting loot drop tables so that rats drop modules that they actually use, not some extraneous nonsense.

Hello and thank you for the post.

Awesome plans, only one question: why the cart before the horse?
Why first the more agressive AI with the zomfg numbers of rats, and only sometime later the reduced rat number and scaled payment, wouldn't it have been a LOT better to do the two the same, design the whole thing from bottom-up like as you have with WH/Incursion, instead of putting the AI from there on top?

Yes, it's a trick, I pretend it to be a question.
Apologies for that.

It's great you have actually take the time to write the above wall O' Text but the TL:DR basically is we realise we have made ****-ups by forcing this on you (apparently without testing properly) but we are not in such a rush as to fix it for you.

Personally I don't really give a monkies how easy or hard it is to kill a NPC ship but I'm more interested in the mission story and content, thats what makes it interesting not how hard/easy it is to kill something.

The problem from my perspective is that you have a static amount of missions you basically boil down to shoot everything and retrieve the final can/woman/slave/scientist/transsexual cyborg etc. There is no randomness in the missions, everything is static
How about something like purely random ship spawns, that way nobody can do the mission to the 'nth degree and then write a post about it telling everyone how to completely afk it.

How about a random spawn by a friendly to the NPC faction to come and help them out.
As I've said many times before it's not the way we do missions/site/plexes that it boring it's the actual content and limited number of these missions.

Also doing any kind of PVE isn't going to teach you PVP no matter how hard the rats are because they will never have the inbuilt sneakiness of a human, doing PVP will do that for you and also I'm doing PVE because I want a break from PVP..........

Or, why not let a bloke coming home from a 12 hour shift, too frustrated to sleep, have a bit of non-frustrating Red Plus hunting?

I like pies!

Thank you for the reply/update.

I would like to mention that you talk a lot about "missions" (a term that we , the community, understand in a very specific way, referring namely to Agent Missions). I hope as you move forward you guys continue to realize how interconnected EVE PVE is and changes to Agent Missions might be good but NOT if they affect "Exploration, Anomalies and Complexes"

Exploration and Complexes serve different purposes than agent missions and require their own special care. A lot of the mess in null (plexes like Blood Raider Naval Shipyard) and low sec (lvl 5 missions are doable but some are not horrible) seems to have come from you guys making sweeping changes to content you didn't seem to understand. FoxFour admitted not being familiar with Fleet Staging Points (probably the most commonly gained escalation as it comes from the popular forsaken and forlorn hubs), which to me begs the question "why not review the content THEN change it".

It's hasn't been a disaster, but this whole thing IMO has been badly implemented (which is sad after the GENIUS of incursions and wormholes) and I hope going forward you guys don't repeat this kind of "cart before the horse" mistake. y'all can start by remembering that exploration and complexes ARE NOT the same things as agent missions.

Awesome plans, only one question: why the cart before the horse?
It seems that the ones that tested the changes had never done any complex/mission, and were satisfied with the new AI else they would have written this post before/with the expansion.

CCP Ytterbium, thank you!

You have made my day, and most likely a lot of other players days as well.

3 or 4 sentry setups are viable, but I like your idea for smaller sentry drones. Maybe bigger ones, too.

Thank you for the reply CCP Ytterbium.

Most of what you said sounds good and I look forward to it but I would like to offer one piece of advice.
Make the new "PVP-PVE" Missions something NEW I will be playing them that's for sure but here is the thing, sometimes as people have said you just want a mindless grind for ISK and to try and make some money.

I love running some anomalies or missions while just chatting away with people in channels I am friends with, if PVE becomes something that requires the same focus as a solo PVP fight? I'm not going to be chatting much during that.

The older missions could still use a nice revamp I wont complain about that, but maybe you should be thinking about giving people more options rather than one style of missions?