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Missions & Complexes

 
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Do missions need a revamp?

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Ciaphas Cyne
Moira.
#141 - 2013-09-12 06:22:09 UTC
Cipher Jones wrote:
Lets face it, with the exception of randomness most of the fixes listed by players might as well be just go fly Incuriosns;

And again, people not realizing you will kill an entire profession (rigmaking) and cripple non mining industrialists.

Sounds a lot harder to revamp missions than most people think IMHO.




I totally respect your desire to keep your profession and make money. There is nothing inherent, however, in ANY idea here that would lead to a drop off or change in your industry. Its strange to me that you single out the idea of randomness as the exception. If you can image a scenario with randomized missions and a reward per hour rate that matches your current one...why cant you extend that concept to the other ideas?

The loot/ISK you get for missions can and should remain where it is. If the desired result is no change in the current economy then simply ensure the same reward per hour rate. This is a computer-simulated world so we have the luxury of being able to manipulate values like that.

Sounds alot easier than most people think...

"buff only the stuff I fly and nerf everything else"

  • you
Cipher Jones
The Thomas Edwards Taco Tuesday All Stars
#142 - 2013-09-12 07:25:02 UTC
Ciaphas Cyne wrote:
Cipher Jones wrote:
Lets face it, with the exception of randomness most of the fixes listed by players might as well be just go fly Incuriosns;

And again, people not realizing you will kill an entire profession (rigmaking) and cripple non mining industrialists.

Sounds a lot harder to revamp missions than most people think IMHO.




I totally respect your desire to keep your profession and make money. There is nothing inherent, however, in ANY idea here that would lead to a drop off or change in your industry. Its strange to me that you single out the idea of randomness as the exception. If you can image a scenario with randomized missions and a reward per hour rate that matches your current one...why cant you extend that concept to the other ideas?

The loot/ISK you get for missions can and should remain where it is. If the desired result is no change in the current economy then simply ensure the same reward per hour rate. This is a computer-simulated world so we have the luxury of being able to manipulate values like that.

Sounds alot easier than most people think...


No, not at all.

I don't make rigs but I sell salvage to people that do. Shitloads of the stuff. Less ships(in missions) means less rigs. My industry alt salvages every wreck in most of my missions. Only some of the ones I blitz in Caldari space get left behind. I reprocess most of the loot. Out of bounty, LP, and loot/salvage, loot & salvage are the biggest chunk of my income. On top of that, when I produce something I get more for ISK for the minerals. A pirate faction BPC turns 170 mil worth of minerals into well over 200mil worth. Reducing the loot and salvage by reducing the amount of ships in missions will cause my hourly income to go down and my cost of production to go up.It would make my industry toon utterly suck at generating ISK.

Randomizing the missions will not do so, its the only idea I saw that is OK for industry. However, randomizing the triggers will decrease ISK/hour if they randomize them in certain missions. For example, the Assault puts out 2400 DPS if you pop the trigger in the first room. It would be a waste of time to fly that particular mission if the trigger was randomized.

internet spaceships

are serious business sir.

and don't forget it
Ciaphas Cyne
Moira.
#143 - 2013-09-12 08:50:23 UTC
Cipher Jones wrote:

No, not at all.

I don't make rigs but I sell salvage to people that do. Shitloads of the stuff. Less ships(in missions) means less rigs.


you havent understood a word ive said have you?

less ships does not necessarily mean less rigs. ill say it again: EVE is a game, and values can be manipulated.

"buff only the stuff I fly and nerf everything else"

  • you
Loyal Follower
Doomheim
#144 - 2013-09-12 09:24:25 UTC  |  Edited by: Loyal Follower
Cipher Jones wrote:
Ciaphas Cyne wrote:
Cipher Jones wrote:
Lets face it, with the exception of randomness most of the fixes listed by players might as well be just go fly Incuriosns;

And again, people not realizing you will kill an entire profession (rigmaking) and cripple non mining industrialists.

Sounds a lot harder to revamp missions than most people think IMHO.




I totally respect your desire to keep your profession and make money. There is nothing inherent, however, in ANY idea here that would lead to a drop off or change in your industry. Its strange to me that you single out the idea of randomness as the exception. If you can image a scenario with randomized missions and a reward per hour rate that matches your current one...why cant you extend that concept to the other ideas?

The loot/ISK you get for missions can and should remain where it is. If the desired result is no change in the current economy then simply ensure the same reward per hour rate. This is a computer-simulated world so we have the luxury of being able to manipulate values like that.

Sounds alot easier than most people think...


No, not at all.

I don't make rigs but I sell salvage to people that do. Shitloads of the stuff. Less ships(in missions) means less rigs. My industry alt salvages every wreck in most of my missions. Only some of the ones I blitz in Caldari space get left behind. I reprocess most of the loot. Out of bounty, LP, and loot/salvage, loot & salvage are the biggest chunk of my income. On top of that, when I produce something I get more for ISK for the minerals. A pirate faction BPC turns 170 mil worth of minerals into well over 200mil worth. Reducing the loot and salvage by reducing the amount of ships in missions will cause my hourly income to go down and my cost of production to go up.It would make my industry toon utterly suck at generating ISK.

Randomizing the missions will not do so, its the only idea I saw that is OK for industry. However, randomizing the triggers will decrease ISK/hour if they randomize them in certain missions. For example, the Assault puts out 2400 DPS if you pop the trigger in the first room. It would be a waste of time to fly that particular mission if the trigger was randomized.



I fully agree and understand your points. You belong to the category of players that are doing missions for funding other activities and need predictable and roughly steady income. That's why i proposed not to change current existing missions (or change them as less as possible) in order not to hurt this sort of players.
Lumirinne
Aliastra
Gallente Federation
#145 - 2013-09-12 09:44:35 UTC
I thought we were improving the missioning experience and not changing everything.

The current missions could stay mainly as they are, not?

While it is essentially mining (an industry), it is still mining with fireworks. Wouldnt want to take away that experience from others by making everything random.

But for seasoned runners, add a new mission class which is clearly more challenging. More PVPlike. Brings you back to problem solving mindset. And which evolves or lives so that one cannot make a script of the walkthrough to rinse and repeat. And without the fixation that one must also proceed from very safe environment into very hostile.

Added with Puzzles, a workshop where players could define the parameters, and new roles where you escort NPC haulers, support their fleets, protect NPC miners against other NPC etc. These were not my ideas but I lost track of whom all to quote, apologies.
Turelus
Utassi Security
The Curatores Veritatis Auxiliary
#146 - 2013-09-12 11:05:25 UTC
L4 missions or PVE as a whole needs a lot of work however there are a few things that need to be kept in mind.

Firstly L4 missions are a source of income for a lot of players, any changes to to the difficulty or the way they are played which doesn't allow for easy farming is going to upset the income for those groups.
The above goes for all PVE in EVE. While I want it to be more engaging and exciting I don't want a system which makes ISK making frustrating.

I would personally like to see new classes of missions where modules like webs, scrams or logistics are needed. (much like the advanced combat tutorials) as well as a mission failure system which isn't as harsh. Maybe the agent just loses faith in you and you need to spend some time working elsewhere building up your reputation and trust again.

Standings and the systems really need a look at as well, right now you can do one level 1 mission with connections and open up level threes right away. This is even more crazy when Diplomacy will actually shift factions who hate you into good standings (I would cap the shift to becoming neutral at 0.00 at most). Standings could also have more use than they do now, give players reasons to work for various corporations or to work their standings up higher. Better missions, more rewards, different mission pools etc.

I also feel L4 missions lack all the love and attention of L3 and lower. I can run a L1 or L2 mission and get an awesome mission brief with interesting scenarios once I warp in where's L4 seems to be warp in and kill every time.

Lastly not entirely mission based but an idea I have been posting elsewhere is to have the Empires become more immersive and alive. Make agents have dynamic qualities which lower the more they are frequented making players move around more looking for greener pastures. Also tie more elements to FW so that taxes and mineral refine rates are based on the level of control your faction has.

Turelus CEO Utassi Security
zeke Rafter
New Danish Industrial
#147 - 2013-09-12 11:41:40 UTC
Lumirinne wrote:
I thought we were improving the missioning experience and not changing everything.

The current missions could stay mainly as they are, not?

While it is essentially mining (an industry), it is still mining with fireworks. Wouldnt want to take away that experience from others by making everything random.

But for seasoned runners, add a new mission class which is clearly more challenging. More PVPlike. Brings you back to problem solving mindset. And which evolves or lives so that one cannot make a script of the walkthrough to rinse and repeat.

"Mining with fireworks" is an excellent way of putting it. And that should ofc still be doable, so yes, current missions would stay mainly as they are, imho. Far from everything should be random. But just a wee bit of variety and randomness might make missioning for other reasons than ISK-generation less tedious. Like, miners have to be somewhat alert because of gankers, may have to think a bit strategically because of competition, could encounter a larger than usual rat spawn, etc. But for those who do missions for pure PvE, there is scanning anomalies, incursions and other ways to go as welll.

Cipher Jones wrote:
(...) Reducing the loot and salvage by reducing the amount of ships in missions will cause my hourly income to go down and my cost of production to go up.It would make my industry toon utterly suck at generating ISK.

Randomizing the missions will not do so, its the only idea I saw that is OK for industry. However, randomizing the triggers will decrease ISK/hour if they randomize them in certain missions. For example, the Assault puts out 2400 DPS if you pop the trigger in the first room. It would be a waste of time to fly that particular mission if the trigger was randomized.


Cipher, you are wrong here, for several reasons.
a) reducing number of ships does NOT necessarily means less loot and salvage. Loot- and salvagetables can be tweaked to insure that payout remains more or less the same
b) less salvage does NOT necessarily mean less income. If demand stays high when supplies are falling, prices go up, for salvage and rigs both. No reason to think that tweaking missions would lead to a fall in demand for rigs, is there? Anyway, prices fluctuate quite a lot as it is, a factor of 3 over a year I think, so a steady, predictable and secure income is out of the question. Hey, this is not a 9-to-5 job in the library, it is a cold and brutal universe, right?
c) lots of time is wasted in and on EVE. It could be said to be one huge waste of time, IRL. We don't think so, ofc. But the point about randomness is that it might go both ways - some times you get a lousy mission and pull a bad trigger early, some times you hit the jackpot and a bonus room. You just can't know until you try. On average, you would probably more or less get the same, but day-to-day variations might be larger.

Again: I am not advocating a full-scale makeover. Missions as they are fills a role. Its just that the tedium of mining/grinding could do with a little less tediousness :-)
Cipher Jones
The Thomas Edwards Taco Tuesday All Stars
#148 - 2013-09-12 17:06:37 UTC
Answering in reverse order because the replies beg it.

Me getting more money for salvage that's worth more because there's less of it is in no way beneficial to me. Inflation would be seen across the board from that. Not only would the rigs I use to fit my ships cost more, so would PLEX and modules and ships.

Lowering the amount of ships in missions but retaining the same amount of salvage and loot from them would work, but then entirely new NPC's would have to be introduced exclusive to missions. Otherwise ratting would become incredibly lucrative and flood the market with with minerals and salvage. And you couldn't just use more expensive modules to compensate monetarily, that would still screw the mineral market. They had to adjust NPC drones for this very reason.

internet spaceships

are serious business sir.

and don't forget it
Twylla
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#149 - 2013-09-13 08:42:45 UTC  |  Edited by: Twylla
Higher missions really need a tweak, really.

Faster throughput. If you're spending more than 15-30 minutes on a generic mission, it's a drag. It's a much more active-play-active-reward system than mining.

Fewer swarms, reasonable challenge for someone of mid-skill level. The payoff is in the cash-out. Even if it pays less, it can be balanced with how frequently they are run.

The big pull should be the LP's and the standings gain, which are currently very slow. Quicker, lighter, slightly lesser payout missions increases the overall gain of those LP's, standing gains, and people are actively moving about and ~playing~

The more people running to and fro missions are people not spending an hour on the forums asking for improvements to the mission system!

Of course, asking for a general redux on NPC bounty payouts across the board and a compensatory buff in mission payouts is a bit much. It's usually too much to ask for nulsec to give ground on anything.

~Weapons R&D technician, arms manufacturer, weapons dealer, wormhole project manager, nulsec fleet pilot, armored warfare command/mindlink specialist, thanatos pilot, alliance executor, now retired~

I've done everything. NOW GET OFF MY LAWN!
Claire Raynor
NovaGear
#150 - 2013-09-13 12:23:01 UTC
CCP Affinity wrote:
Loyal Follower wrote:
Ciaphas Cyne wrote:
ive never enjoyed questing in video games. so the less effort CCP puts into missions the better for me.

That's why the proposal is to provide us, at least the tools for all of us who enjoy them.



Everyone enjoys different things :) We should make an effort to cater for as much of that as possible or at least give the ability for players to make their own fun.



I am really loving what I'm hearing from your posts. I REALLY like the fact you said you are getting and working on the tools programming to help you - that makes me think you are building up to sustainable and significant content creation. I seriously can't wait!!!

Please if you can - I love the idea of fewer harder ships - but I also love that Minnie storyline mission where the Amarr have their Tower that you need to kill.

If I could direct all my subscription monies you'd be getting them - after all - I PvE - because I like it best!!!

Thanks - this all sounds soo goood! Esspecially off the back of the rebalancing! - Be great if you can make drones work in missions again too!


Thanks
zeke Rafter
New Danish Industrial
#151 - 2013-09-14 00:04:32 UTC
Cipher Jones wrote:
Answering in reverse order because the replies beg it.

Me getting more money for salvage that's worth more because there's less of it is in no way beneficial to me. Inflation would be seen across the board from that. Not only would the rigs I use to fit my ships cost more, so would PLEX and modules and ships.

Lowering the amount of ships in missions but retaining the same amount of salvage and loot from them would work, but then entirely new NPC's would have to be introduced exclusive to missions. Otherwise ratting would become incredibly lucrative and flood the market with with minerals and salvage. And you couldn't just use more expensive modules to compensate monetarily, that would still screw the mineral market. They had to adjust NPC drones for this very reason.

Cipher, you may be right to a certain degree. But mostly, I still think not.

For one thing, the mineral market is not very sensitive to the amount of loot in missions. I think. I am willing to be taught otherwise, but I would think that most minerals on the market comes from mining, not from reprocessed loot. No inflation there, and thus no inflation to anything but rigs. And rigs are a minor part of ship expenses. I think. For most players. Therefore, you get somewhat less from reprocessing loot, but increased prices of salvage might make up for that, and then some. I don't know the relative share of your income from loot and salvage compute, but if salvage is reduced by a third and prices double, you will probably come out ahead.I have no firm statistics to underpin this, it is a hunch, and I may be wrong.

Second, they adjusted (cut) the drone alloys droprates very much in order to keep mining viable. Drone alloys are not by themselves used for anything, they are reprocessed into minerals. They cut supply to raise mineral prices, and it worked well for miners and looters, but ofc not for those making a living from drone alloys. But salvaged materials are not reprocessed but used as they are for very specific purposes.

Finally, you are probably right that adjusting loot and salvage tables for missions alone is not easily done. Fewer ships - less loot and salvage. Ok. As said, I don't think it will be a catastrophy for your way of living, and by the way I was not the one who suggested that missions as such should have fewer, tougher ships - I merely proposed that the opposition varied a bit more. I am not out to nerf missions, on te contrary.
ido spaceship
#152 - 2013-09-16 18:55:09 UTC
i like what CCP have been doing recently, big thumbs up but if they were to look at missions i have some ideas.

split each level class into 2, (so you get lvl 1 and lvl 1.5 etc) with the .5 version being the same but with more elite ships / ewar.

having missions around planets, this could easily be inserted into eve lore and im thinking attack / defend orbital installation missions? you know, these amarr scum bags have set up shop in orbit on this planet go kill, or amarr scum bags are shooting mah stuff help meh - it does make more sense to me that fighting would be around plants rather than in the middle of nowhere..unless there are drugs and/or pirate dens involved

there is another game out there, not an mmo (shock horror) called warhammer:dawn of war2 (bear with me) there is a mini game within it called the last stand, its an arena where 3 people have to work together to defeat 20 waves of bad guys, its quite fun and can be difficult if you dont have the right loadouts, i guess what im steering toward is mini incursions? i have toons that are part of an incursion group and sometimes i dont want to go to all that trouble if im not going to be online for long but want the same kind of team based experience. i guess incentivising people to run missions in groups would also achieve this effect, but it would be nice if the difficulty scaled with amount of ships warped on grid rather than the current welp fest having multiple pilots currently is.

i love the suggestion about not having to dock to speak to agents, maybe have more of them actually in space for the novelty of being able to say hai to your fellow mishers - this would also make it much easier to avoid those nasty faction missions as you could contact every agent within your area and then go shoot things you actually want to shoot and not allow to much freedom as you could prolly deplete all the agents in a given area within 4 hours if you really tried.

would it be wise now we have crimewatch, to have the facility to advertise your availability for mission running through some in game window? like maybe an extension to the agent finder. - infact i dont like this idea but im leaving it in case im wrong.

finally im tired of my corpies looking cool by getting drunk and loosing ships in missions, no matter the level of intoxication i find this difficult, please make missions more harder!
Caleb Seremshur
Commando Guri
Guristas Pirates
#153 - 2013-09-18 07:47:58 UTC
Klymer wrote:
The problem with making missions more about LP and less about isk reward and bounties is that then the market will become saturated with LP items and the prices will plummet.

You could increase the number of missions 10 fold, but eventually they'll get stale as people run them over and over. As long as the game relies on a static mission pool created by CCP the problem isn't going to go away.

A 'mission editor', for lack of a better term, that allows players to create pve content is really whats needed.


Well no in an extreme scenario an Isk shortage occurs and pricea would plummet due to lack of maeket liquidity. Removing bountiea from pirate rats in belts for example would probably crash the entire nullsec pseudo economy andnforce them to use drug/ship/ammo/mineral sales to mission runners as their only viable source of iak generation. That is provided that loot drop for meta 3 or 4 itema arent exported
Lumirinne
Aliastra
Gallente Federation
#154 - 2013-09-18 10:23:00 UTC
All these arguments about whatever changes in missions dont make any changes into LP, loot, salvage because it would destroy EVE market are arguments without much sense.

A functioning market does fluctuate and change over time. Business is about taking risks and sometimes some of those risks will realize. So you think it over and experiment with wise changes to your Earning Model and keep thriving. The EVE market is way too fixed already. Eg. stuff required to manufacture a JF will keep them oddly expensive, because it, among all else, is configured so into the constantlike referential variables of the EVE Universe. Though I bought one for fun with some spare missioning income and it sure is a nice ship.

Its a seesaw between predictability and gaming. Less predictability becomes more Gaming.
fudface
ACME-INC
#155 - 2013-09-18 11:44:35 UTC
Loyal Follower wrote:
Hello,

i fully agree with you that there must be something to be done with missions. I believe that much more missions, mainly in level 4 should be added and also one or two more epic arcs. Especially the level 4 get very repetitive after a short while.

I am thinking though that we (as players) could help on this subject. I have a proposal :

I don't know though whether Developers/Designers of EVE would take into consideration such proposals, but we could start a thread of designing/describing for example one level 4 mission that would like to be added in EVE. With details such, Ships, Structures, limitations, stages, triggers, gates, NPCs, distances, possible drops and some lore text that is to included in the mission, anything that is needed. Developers could take this as raw material, tailor them as needed and include them in a patch! we don't have to be on the quantity side : one very good designed mission one can propose is more than enough.

What do you say?


Thanks


i like the general idea of your proposal, however i think it would be better to use a chaos engine and just set outer parameters for ship spawn size and composition. use sleeper ai variant for the rats.

make the new missions more random less formulaic.

my 2 isk

my 2 isk worth
Bastion Arzi
Ministry of War
Amarr Empire
#156 - 2013-09-18 12:12:41 UTC
If randomising the missions would affect the loot tables so much how about introducing new loot? such as collectible trading cards of all ships in the game. These could be made through bps, bought through lp, and found from rats.

You could even make it into a sort of in game trading card game to give miners something to do while they mine.

I dont know all the specifics its just an idea. what do you think... terrible?
Gimme more Cynos
Deep Core Mining Inc.
Caldari State
#157 - 2013-09-18 16:37:41 UTC
zeke Rafter wrote:

For one thing, the mineral market is not very sensitive to the amount of loot in missions. I think. I am willing to be taught otherwise, but I would think that most minerals on the market comes from mining, not from reprocessed loot. No inflation there, and thus no inflation to anything but rigs. And rigs are a minor part of ship expenses. I think. For most players. Therefore, you get somewhat less from reprocessing loot, but increased prices of salvage might make up for that, and then some. I don't know the relative share of your income from loot and salvage compute, but if salvage is reduced by a third and prices double, you will probably come out ahead.I have no firm statistics to underpin this, it is a hunch, and I may be wrong.


I'm curious - for how long do you play, and did you noticed that CCP nerfed mission-loot twice in ~2 1/2 years because they wanted to decrease the minerals from gun-mining?
IIshira
School of Applied Knowledge
Caldari State
#158 - 2013-09-18 22:25:02 UTC
Bastion Arzi wrote:
If randomising the missions would affect the loot tables so much how about introducing new loot? such as collectible trading cards of all ships in the game. These could be made through bps, bought through lp, and found from rats.

You could even make it into a sort of in game trading card game to give miners something to do while they mine.

I dont know all the specifics its just an idea. what do you think... terrible?


Just what I need to put in my Raven's cargo hold. A collectable Raven trading card. Wait when it goes pop do I lose two Ravens?
Luis Graca
#159 - 2013-09-18 23:47:19 UTC
I would like to see 3 changes

1º - epic arc with random paths instead of the player choose them has he likes sometime it would be random and in the end the reward would be also random but with the approximate values of the current ones.

2º bring L5 back to high-sec, a long time ago the send them to low-sec to make the risk/reward thing however times change and if some one wants to go to low-sec shoot NPC's they will look for plexs, incursions or fw PvE.

Also the LP stores from high-sec and low-sec would be different, something like low-sec modules and implants and high-sec ships, ammo and industry stuff. (small hauling VS big hauling)

Bonus: to make L5 really difficult only let 1 or 2 ships enter them because if there's a lot of people to do them them go do incursions, however there might be a problem because of the no "vultures" there

3º Add at least 1 new mission a month it's not much and CCP can still let player do it with a mission creator tool then they would only have to choose.

Players could even test and give ratings of them in the test server for help.
DSpite Culhach
#160 - 2013-09-19 00:04:13 UTC
I had expected that the EVE missions, and really, all the PvE stuff would follow the same harsh rules of the rest of the EVE universe, I was actually surprised when it did not.

A mission should not have agent penalties, the penalties should come from the fact that you are putting a shiny ship in the middle of danger to make some ISK. Some days the reinforcements never arrive because you explode or jam a ship(s) calling for help, some days the reinforcements were there, cloaked, already. Sometimes the mission is a NPC ambush/gank and you leave in structure, if at all.

I should be scared every time I warp into missions, and I am fine with that, as long as I know that I can still turn a profit by not losing ships too often, but yea, ships should burn, at least when a mission is not being run fully awake and aware, and right now, other then player ganks, it's a shooting gallery for NPC ships.

I don't know how to fix this easily.

Based on what I know about the current mission content I have seen, and not wanting to mess about with players "incomes" from L4's, you would almost have to introduce a new class, one where the mission you get assigned is based on the hull you just flew to the agent in, and is generated dynamically, with extra ship escalation if and when extra players are on the grid.

Yea, I'm sure that would be REAL EASY to code :) but yea, seriously, that line of thinking is the only logical one that makes sense to me. You have a dynamic mission gen, and players can take their chances.

I apparently have no idea what I'm doing.