Missions & Complexes

They should fire whoever added that rat drone aggro and hire you...

I signed in just too quote this.



And to add:
When it comes to PvE, while a completely different genre of gaming, i think Left For Dead (the first one) is the best example of dynamic PvE content.
Even just simply randomizing aspects of the missions could be a beautiful thing.

And i understand people play Eve for the people, at least thats why i played for the years i have, but making what outsiders might consider to be Eve's "quest" system would really help those who are more on the fence enjoy the experience of Eve.

One thing I forgot to mention and which is relevant (especially since we are talking about likes of Director AI). Unlike most MMO content known to me (and unlike L4D matches), EVE require much more effort during preparation phase than during completion phase. If you don't bring right stuff, nothing really that you can do. That creates some serious problems with randomized content.

Nerf missions isn't the same as making missions more interesting. Randomizing triggers = more tank, longer grind, that's it. Just like Scarlet's randomized rats = fit omni. It makes pve more grindy and tedious, nothing more.

As an additional problem, noobs with lower sp pop to rats more easily.

You need to take a look at Rovinia's post. These are the kind of ideas that add variety. They don't nerf. Nerf is neither necessary nor desirable.

I think the problem is that combat in EVE is just essentially extremely boring. What makes it enjoyable in for instance PvP is all the surrounding layers. The long hunt for a potential victim.. never knowing what you might encounter.. the infantile joy of ruining other people's day.. the alluring thought of finding some really awesome and valuable module.
I believe the main thing that gets your blood pumping in PvP is the major risk factor. It's always possible to end up in a situation where you'll lose your terribly expensive ship, which makes it a joy whenever you see the battle going in your favor.
An entirely different thing is massive fleet battles, but I really don't think it's the orbiting while having your turrets turned on that makes you totally excited - it's rather the immense scale of battle, with people shouting in their mics and everything being in chaos. The sight of a much hated goonswarm titan blowing up. It's all great fun.

So now if you take away all of those things, we are left with what we know as PvE in EVE. There isn't any hunt or random encounters that'll leave you at great risk of blowing up (unless you're quite new, of course). There isn't the same tingling sensation in your pants when you pwn and trash talk NPCs and there just generally isn't any risk to it, so you don't get the adrenaline pumping and thus you have the mental capacity to notice how boring and quite monotone it actually is.

The inherit problem is of course that in order to fuel the incredibly risk driven PvP, where you due to that very nature may lose everything without earning anything, there has to be some more or less risk free fallback so people can build up their ISK reserves again. Otherwise people would just have to quit the game.. which wouldn't make any sense.

Rovinia's fabled ideas would certainly be a step in the right direction though.

Cyno skills are trivial for the task of setting a cyno to jump to. The prereq is a fitting skill that default new characters already start with for crying out loud. If they were adding it to missions, then they could choose to reduce the prereq to being the default level, so that the 1 time preperation job was all of 15 minutes.

ewar is handy - I fit eccm for gurista missions, I fit a sebo fairly often anyway as 120km lock range is useful, and always for serpentis missions, I trained the anti jam skill and I occasionally use ships with webs, which is the same skill as a disruptor. ie I can't see how any of this is any skill point distraction to a mission runner. They are just basic combat skills.

There is a pool of L4 combat missions that people like - they are largely of the battleship fountain variety. The rest are just time wasters, that might be enjoyed once by a person doing it in a battlecruiser as their first L4 ever. After that they are boring.

IMO having a dreadnaught in a mission that needed to be TD'd to avoid being blapped by it would be far more interesting than yet another yawn spawn of 5 battleships, and the more that counter fitting and fitting of utility is required, imo the more interesting fitting the ship becomes. The mission dread could have a 5mil bounty (ie 5 bs worth), and be buffer fitted, so as to not penalise people with low dps.

Suggesting a Buffer Tank to compensate for Low DPS pilots just means they will be there for forever whittling away at a mountain with a pen-knife.

Adding specific module requirements for missions would ad some spice, but in those cases I'd like to see a "civilian" variant that only works in that mission and takes a little longer to to get the job done than the "real" module, but at the same time allows the "real" module to be used.

Making some PvE missions work a little more like PvP wouldnt hurt imo as it would allow PvE fit ships to have a better than snowballs chance in hell of surviving a PvP encounter in LowSec, thereby allowing the fabled migration into LowSec that the Nullbears whine about all the time.

When I pull off stupid misstakes like full room + trigger, I warpout and change my way of doing the mission and thats what I think player should do. My 1st lvl 4 in a drake pretty much happened like this because I didn't read the trigger at all. I warped out, fit an AB, warped back in and kited enemy ship aligned to a station. As soon as the buffer was failing, I could instant warp as long as I made sure to not be pointed. The mission sure took a shitload of time wich was not helped at all by the low dps of my low skill drake but it still held together and it was much more fun than doing a lvl 3.

I should not of been there as I was low skilled just like toher low skilled people should also not be in lvl 4 for exactly the same reason. It seems like people only look for efficiency. Dosen't it feels like another job when you do the missions over and over again with no change? Or maybe you are all doing a time attack mode?

I wounder if it might actually be better if CCP started off with something small or simple and work their way up instead of rushing in some major change. I don't know, maybe give mission rats the same warp mechanics of belt rats (instead of magically spawning on field, they land on field from warp). Having "friendly" rats show up from time to time as stated before sounds interesting, even if they were religated to merely firing 0 DPS guns for show.

It doesn't change the fact that people would just move to stupid tanked boats.

DMC has a good idea with a different mission type if people want this. I don't actually mind the idea but I'm not sure it's a good move to be done globally.

I am /dead/ set against any point requirement though - 'go short range or go home' is not a good place to be.